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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


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THE  MAN  FORBID 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


BY 

JOHN  DAVIDSON 


WITH  AN   INTRODUCTION  BY 

EDWARD  J.  O'BRIEN 


M 


BOSTON 
THE  BALL  PUBLISHING  CO. 

1910 


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INTRODUCTION 

Copyii^'ht  1910,  by 
THE  BALL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


9R. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 7 

The  Man  P'orbid 21 

Pre-Shakespearianism 33 

Banderole's   tEsthetic    Bill    ...  41 

On  Writing  a  Causerie 55 

The   Criticism  of  Poetry    ....  65 

Tete-a-Tete .75 

A  Spirit 89 

Tete-a-Tete 99 

A  Would-be  Londoner 109 

The  Art  of  Poetry 125 

Thoughts  on  Irony 133 

George  Meredith's  Odes      ....  139 
Evolution  in  Literature    .       .      .      .151 

Tete-a-Tete 155 

Poetry  and   Criticism 163 

Tete-a-Tete 169 

Tete-a-Tete 183 

Chanctonbury  Ring 195 

By-Ways 207 

Prose    Eclogue 219 

On   Interviewing 231 

On  the  Downs 217 


519535 

KGLISH 


INTRODUCTION 

JOHN  DAVIDSON  has  given  notable 
work  to  his  generation  as  a  poet,  as  a 
novelist,  as  an  essayist,  and  as  a  critic.  All 
his  literary  work  comprehends  a  philosophy 
of  life,  and  whether  or  not  this  philosophy 
be  original  or  echoed,  true  or  false,  the  fact 
remains  that  it  has  had  a  strongly  marked, 
though  not  always  clearly  recognised,  influ- 
ence on  English  letters.  If  his  views  of  life 
seem  merely  the  result  of  mental  indigestion 
brought  on  by  an  overdose  of  Nietszche,  it 
is  likewise  true  that  his  forceful  expression 
gave  to  these  views  a  more  serious  hearing 
by  a  larger  audience  than  had  hitherto  been 
granted  to  most  English  followers  of  the 
Apostle  of  the  Uehermensch. 

By  reason  of  his  doctrines,  the  facts  of 
his  life  are  interesting,  if  only  for  the  light 
they  shed  on  the  pathetic  though  not  uncom- 
mon contrast  between  this  man's  dream  and 

7 


8  INTRODUCTION 

his  deed.  For  like  many  more  before  him  he 
glimpsed  the  Grail,  but  only  through  a  mist 
of  error  which  he  lacked  the  will  to  disperse. 
Yet  inasmuch  as  he  followed  the  quest  long 
and  faithfully,  ere  he  succumbed  to  the 
final  weakness,  the  chronicle  of  his  days  is 
ennobling,  and  though  simple  as  far  as  out- 
ward happenings  were  concerned,  shows  much 
complexity  in  the  literary  product. 

John  Davidson  was  born  at  Barrhead,  in 
Renfrewshire,  Scotland,  on  the  eleventh  of 
April,  1857.  His  father,  the  Reverend  Alex- 
ander Davidson,  was  a  minister  of  the 
Evangelical  Union.  The  boy's  training  was 
hardly  academic  in  the  true  sense  of  the 
word,  and  was  limited  to  what  he  was  inclined 
to  gather  in  The  Highlanders'  Academy  in 
Greenock,  where  he  acted  as  a  sort  of  pupil- 
teacher,  and  in  the  course  of  a  single  session 
at  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Leaving 
college  in  1877,  he  wrote  his  first  play,  now 
known  as  "  An  Unhistorical  Pastoral,"  which, 
however,  was  not  published  until  over  ten 
years  later.  As  a  boy  he  had  worked  as  an 
assistant  in  a  chemical  laboratory  in  Green- 
ock, and  later  as  assistant  to  the  Town  Analyst, 


INTRODUCTION  9 

and  the  training  which  this  occupation  gave 
him  was  utilised  to  no  little  advantage  in  later 
days  when  he  sought  for  an  apt  simile  to 
convey  his  meaning.  Upon  leaving  the  Uni- 
versity, he  took  refuge  in  teaching,  and  be- 
tween 1877  and  1889  he  gave  instruction  in 
numerous  private  and  charity  schools,  devot- 
ing his  leisure  to  poetic  and  dramatic  compo- 
sition. In  1890,  he  came  up  to  London,  and 
eked  out  a  scanty  subsistence  by  writing  ar- 
ticles and  reviews  for  the  Glasgow  Herald 
and  the  Speaker,  until  his  poetry  began  to 
attract  the  attention  of  the  literary  public. 
For  the  next  few  years  his  career  was  that  of 
the  successful  journalist  who  elevated  his 
craft  by  the  sheer  energy  of  his  effort  to  a 
position  where  it  might  probably  be  called 
inspired.  The  irony  of  his  life  was  this. 
Potentially  capable  of  leadership,  he  bowed 
to  public  opinion  and  followed  the  line  of 
least  resistance.  The  immediate  success  was 
possibly  greater;  the  ultimate  painful  out- 
come is  unhappily  well-known  to  everyone. 
In  the  latter  part  of  April,  1909,  he  suddenly 
disappeared,  leaving  behind  him  manuscripts 
whicli    clearly    revealed    a    suicidal    purpose. 


10  INTRODUCTION 

Several  months  later  his  body  was  discov- 
ered, and  to-day  the  world  mourns  him  as  a 
talented  genius  whose  will-power  succumbed 
to  despair. 

To  turn  from  John  Davidson's  life  to  his 
work  is  as  if  the  reader's  mind  were  suddenly 
to  be  plunged  into  an  over-stimulating  cur- 
rent of  mental  activity.  The  effect  is  pleas- 
ant, but  it  is  a  shock.  No  matter  what  the 
form  of  Davidson's  expression  may  be, 
whether  it  be  prose  or  poetry,  essay  or  drama, 
we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  a  strongly 
combative  intellect  which  does  violence  to 
our  beliefs,  and  half  convinces  us  by  sheer 
force  of  ei3igram  and  paradox.  What  more 
shocking  mental  stimulant  can  be  found  than 
such  an  interrogation  as  this,  which  stands 
all  by  itself  in  "  A  Rosary."  "  Is  not  hope 
only  a  more  subtle  form  of  despair  ?  "  These 
arresting  questions,  or  statements  such  as  this, 
"  Dignity  is  impudence,"  are  invariably 
novel,  and  their  appeal  to  the  reader's  intel- 
lectual pride  is  so  subtly  calculated  as  to  take 
by  storm  the  position  which  a  more  suave  and 
ordered  argument  would  leave  intact.  By 
reason  of  this  and  other  characteristics,  John 


INTRODUCTION  11 

Davidson  has  succeeded  in  founding  a  school 
in  contemporary  English  composition  which 
may  be  briefly  characterised  as  the  apotheosis 
of  journalism,  and  whose  chief  exponent  to- 
day is  Mr.  Gilbert  Chesterton.  Even  the  cas- 
ual reader  will  observe  far  more  than  a  super- 
ficial resemblance,  for  example,  between 
"  The  Napoleon  of  Notting  Hill  "  or  "  The 
Club  of  Queer  Trades,"  and  John  Davidson's 
less  familiar,  though  by  no  means  inferior, 
novels,  "  Perfervid  "  and  "  The  Good  Men." 
Nor  is  this  resemblance  confined  to  fiction.  I 
think  there  is  a  very  marked  similarity  in 
thought-processes,  to  say  the  least,  between 
the  critical  essays  of  John  Davidson,  as  they 
appeared  week  after  week  in  the  columns  of 
"  The  Speaker,"  and  the  causeries  and  re- 
views by  Gilbert  Chesterton  which  appeared 
not  long  afterward  in  the  same  critical  jour- 
nal. 

This  type  of  creative  work  is  neither 
healthy  nor  healthful.  Think  of  Dr.  John- 
son turned  Pierrot,  and  the  reductio  ad  ab- 
surdum  is  complete  and  immediate.  The 
pose  is  delightful, —  indeed  it  is  almost  fully 
justified, —  but    it    lacks    enthusiasm.      It    is 


12  INTRODUCTION 

not  fresh  and  natural:  it  is  forced  and  arti- 
ficial. It  takes  different  forms,  you  may  say. 
True:  but  whether  your  would-be  Dr.  John- 
son is  a  follower  of  Davidson  or  a  follower 
of  his  master  Nietszche,  the  net  result  is  the 
same.  For  the  external  is  all  that  is  copied: 
the  red  blood  of  enthusiasm,  though  not  the 
counterfeit  fluid  of  force,  is  almost  completely 
lost.  The  absurd  public  antics  of  Gerard 
de  Nerval  and  other  French  symbolists,  which 
Symons  relates,  and  Gilbert  Chesterton  jump- 
ing in  and  out  of  hansom  cabs,  as  related  by 
himself,  seem  equally  artificial.  The  truth  of 
the  matter  is  that  the  fin-de-siecle  pose  is  be- 
ginning to  seem  old-fashioned,  and  that  this 
reaction  from  it  is  in  danger  of  going  to  even 
more  violent  extremes.  For  this  reason,  it  is 
important  to  know  just  what  John  Davidson, 
who  holds  the  balance  between  the  two,  really 
stands  for.  If  he  had  been  the  strong  man, 
like  Dr.  Johnson,  the  study  of  his  work  would 
have  been  more  valuable.  As  it  is,  he  is  the 
sole  bridge  that  we  have  between  the  period 
of  the  malade  imaginaire,  and  the  Kipling 
period  that  followed.     The  two  periods  may 


INTRODUCTION  13 

seem  identical  in  point  of  date^  but  the  fact 
remains^  I  think,  that  the  so-called  f,n-de- 
siecle  era  was  experienced  long  before  it  was 
expressed,  and  that  England  suffered  less 
from  it  than  any  other  nation. 

The  contemporary  man  who  is  potentially 
strong  but  vacillatingly  weak,  if  he  have  an 
original  mind  and  a  magnetic  personality,  is 
bound  to  suffer  much  in  the  conflict.  To  him 
both  sides  appear  to  have  much  of  truth,  and 
in  endeavoring  to  live  his  life,  he  is  torn  be- 
tween two  ideals  seemingly  wide  apart  as  the 
poles, —  the  one  apparently  symbolising 
death,  and  the  other  life.  The  suffering  is 
born  of  delusion,  for  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
two  are  one,  and  both  are  evil,  since  spiritual 
death  for  itself  and  bodily  life  and  progress 
for  itself  are  one  and  indivisible  and  false. 
Villiers  de  I'lsle  Adam,  the  typical  symbolist, 
informed  his  countrymen  that  his  continued 
existence  reminded  him  of  the  bored  playgoer 
in  the  front  seat  of  a  proscenium  box  who  sat 
tlirough  the  play  only  out  of  courtesy  for 
the  feelings  of  his  neighbors.  Kipling,  on 
the   other  hand,  preaclies  the  gospel  of  the 


14  INTRODUCTION 

body.  You  cannot  be  an  animal  and  live  only 
out  of  politeness.  It  is  a  contradiction  in 
ternas. 

Davidson  sought  the  magnificent  vision, 
and  found  it  neither  in  Syraons  nor  in  Kip- 
ling. Being  a  child  of  his  century,  he  turned 
to  Nietszche.  Though  he  repudiated  evolu- 
tion, and  wrote  a  novel  to  attack  its  absurdi- 
ties, as  another  has  done  after  him,  he  found 
relief  and  inspiration  for  his  thought  and 
expression  in  the  cymbals  and  sunrises  of 
Zarathustra.  Here,  at  last,  he  breathed  a 
clearer,  brighter  air.  In  "  Sentences  and 
Paragraphs  "  he  had  written  as  follows:  — 

"  The  chief  hindrances  in  the  consideration 
of  any  matter  are  the  thoughts  of  others.  It 
is  not  so  much  a  test  of  genius  to  think 
originally,  as  to  know  what  one  actually  does 
think.  Some  men  upon  most  subjects  have 
two  judgments:  a  public  one  for  daily  use, 
and  a  private  one  which  they  deceive  them- 
selves into  the  belief  they  never  held.  There 
are  decent,  honest  men  who  opine  the  opin- 
ions of  others,  persuaded  that  they  are  their 
own;  few  indeed  can  detach  their  proper 
thought  from  the  mass  of  ideas." 


INTRODUCTION  15 

Realising  this  truth  then,  he  turned,  as  I 
said,  to  Nietszche.  He  was  fortunately  too 
clear-sighted  to  follow  his  master  absolutely. 
As  the  ostrich  buries  its  head  in  the  sand,  so 
Nietszche  buries  his  nose  in  the  upper  air, 
and  refuses  to  look  at  the  slime  in  which  his 
feet  are  dabbling,  conscious  only  of  a  pleas- 
ant, titillating  coolness.  Let  us  be  primitive, 
but  let  our  minds  be  clear,  says  Davidson, 
and  he  looks  at  the  misery  beneath  him,  and 
forgets  the  blue  sky  above.  Both  are  wrong, 
but  both  mean  well,  for  Nietszche  and  David- 
son are  alike  striving.  Both  endeavour  to 
pull  the  human  race  up  with  them,  but  David- 
son is  content  to  lift  them,  earth  and  all,  to 
his  own  level,  while  Nietszche  pulls  men  up 
by  the  roots,  and  pelts  them  at  the  stars  for 
playthings.  Davidson  plays  with  his  and 
other  men's  souls:  with  Nietszche  mankind, 
including  himself,  is  only  a  toy  for  the  firma- 
ment. 

I  have  emphasised  this  distinction  so 
strongly  for  a  special  purpose,  wishing  to 
bring  out  the  fact  that  Davidson  was  in  no 
sense  an  imitator.  He  saw  his  own  individ- 
ual vision,  and  if  it  was  an  Inferno,  so  much 


16  INTRODUCTION 

the  greater  was  his  courage  in  voicing  it.  He 
saw  it  in  terms  of  poetry,  and  he  expressed 
it  nobly,  for  the  sense  of  beauty  was  ever 
uppermost.  He  liad  the  lyric  mind,  and  it 
was  his  misfortune  to  be  a  Scotsman.  Meta- 
})hysic  has  killed  more  minds  than  it  has  ever 
cured,  and  the  Scotsman  is  ever  prone  to  dis- 
putation. That  is  one  reason  why  Dr.  John- 
son detested  Scotsmen.  He  considered  them 
too  individualistic.  That  is  the  reason  why 
Scotsmen,  apart  from  the  immortal  Boswell 
who  was  surely  no  true  Scot,  detest  Dr.  John- 
son, and  why  John  Davidson  detested  the 
literary  and  ethical  standards  of  his  day. 
For  this  reason,  and  this  reason  only,  he  pre- 
cipitated a  strong  reaction  in  poetry  and 
prose,  which,  together  with  the  anvil-blows 
of  a  young  Indian  journalist,  saved  English 
literature   from  being  annexed  to   France. 

Is  it  not  well  to  sound  a  note  of  warning? 
The  intellectual  earth  nowadays  is  flat,  and 
contemporary  England,  in  running  away 
from  a  monster  that  is  dead,  may  fall  over 
the  bounding  precipice  of  the  land  of  com- 
mon-sense. Shaw  and  Chesterton  are  a  por- 
tent.    Their  method  is  defensible:  their  con- 


INTRODUCTION  17 

riction  seems  open  to  question.  Yet  their 
influence  is  great, —  almost  overmastering. 
John  Bull  would  do  well  to  look  to  his  other 
island  before  it  is  too  late,  for  there,  and 
there  only,  lies  the  fresh  spirit  of  romantic 
beauty  which  can  save  English  letters  from 
itself. 

The  present  collection  of  essays  may  be 
looked  upon  as  a  sequel  to  "  Sentences  and 
Paragraphs."  Gathered  in  the  same  man- 
ner, from  the  dusty  files  of  a  forgotten  peri- 
odical, they  have  their  significance  as  an 
emphatic  statement  of  some  of  John  David- 
son's most  individual  and  stimulating  views. 
This  interest  should  have  been  sufficient  to 
have  ensured  their  preservation,  and  it  is  the 
editor's  excuse,  if  such  be  necessary,  for  his 
undertaking. 

Edward  J.  O'Brien. 

January  24th,  1910. 


THE  MAN  FORBID 


THE    MAN    FORBID 

THE  long  undulating  seaward  slope 
of  the  cllffless  Downs  is  always,  in 
clear  weather,  an  unsatisfying  prospect. 
The  face  of  the  Downs,  starved,  discon- 
tented, and  unkempt,  lowers  gloomily  on 
the  sea  under  rain ;  in  the  sunshine,  a  pale, 
bleak  radiance  plays  over  it,  as  of  a  land 
hoping  against  hope.  The  clifFless  Downs, 
that  is.  Where  the  white  escarpment  tow- 
ers along  the  beach,  the  seaboard  has  a 
different  personality ;  more  engaging  con- 
tours, greener  turf,  a  lofty  attitude,  a 
splendid  place  immediately  surmounting 
the  tides.  The  precipice  gives  strength 
and  dignity ;  the  slow,  serpentine  declivity 
creeping  to  an  undistinguished  shore  is 
as  dispiriting  as  a  string  of  blind  beg- 
gars.    But  in  the  evening  the  low-lying 

21 


22  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Downs  seem  to  rise  from  their  supine  pos- 
ture; cloaked  in  the  dusk  they  beckon  and 
whisper,  and  you  go  to  meet  them  again. 
Strange  sounds,  sti-ange  beings  appear 
upon  the  Downs  in  the  gloaming,  if  you 
have  the  ears  to  hear,  the  sight  to  see. 
There  and  then  the  Itinerant  met  the  Her- 
mit, The  Man  Forbid,  who  neither  hopes 
nor  fears,  nor  hates  nor  loves.  Where  he 
lives  none  can  tell.  Sometimes  he  haunts 
the  desert,  sometimes  the  snow-clad  moun- 
tains. The  Itinerant  met  him  on  the 
Downs.  The  day  had  been  dull  and  wet, 
but  towards  sunset  the  clouds  broke  up  a 
little  and  the  rain  ceased.  Above  the  sea, 
slanting  like  a  ledge  of  dark  jade,  hung 
a  purple  haze  rimming  the  horizon.  Above 
the  haze  disordered  brands  smouldered 
darkly.  The  depth  and  intensity  of  the 
crimson  fire  filled  and  possessed  the  mind ; 
it  was  difficult  to  see  the  overhanging:  leaden 
cloud,  or  to  note  the  golden  background 
of  the  fire,  the  fainter  yellow,  the  pale 
green.     Away  from  the  west,  cross-hatched 


THE  MAN  FORBID  23 

vapour  flushed  rosy  red  and  quickly  faded 
into  pencil  marks.  Behind  Cissbury  Ring 
an  immense  rampart  of  steel-blue  cloud 
rose  menacingly.  In  the  north  the  shadow 
of  night  already  loomed.  As  the  Itinerant 
watched  the  passage  of  time  from  the 
verge  of  Erringham  Valley,  a  hand  was  laid 
on  his  shoulder,  and  a  face  peered  into 
his,  the  face  of  The  Man  Forbid. 

"  I  know  who  vou  are,"  said  the  Itin- 
erant  at  once.  "  What  do  you  want  with 
me.?" 

"  I  come  to  warn  you  !  " 

"To  warn  me.?" 

"  Yes.  That  is  my  only  touch  with  hu- 
manity: I  would  have  others  avoid  my 
fate." 

"What  is  your  fate?" 

"  I  shall  tell  you.  I  became  so  close  a 
comrade  of  the  day  and  the  night  and  the 
time  of  the  year,  so  submissive  a  lover  and 
student  of  men  and  women,  that  I  forgot 
all  I  had  ever  learnt  from  books.  Then  it 
seemed  to  me  that  I  stood  erect  for  the 


24  THE  MAN  FORBID 

first  time;  and  I  looked  with  compassion 
on  the  inultitude  beside  me,  bent  double 
under  toppling  libraries.  I  noted  that  the 
heavier  his  load  of  libraries,  and  the  more 
prone  his  attitude,  the  happier  the  porter 
seemed  to  be.  I  saw  vast  hordes  of  peo- 
ple engaged  in  tilling  the  soil,  and  in  many 
other  occupations,  the  majority  of  whom, 
whenever  they  could  snatch  an  interval  of 
leisure,  spent  it  in  grovelling  under  heavy 
burdens  of  printed  matter,  which,  if  they 
had  none  of  their  own,  they  would  beg, 
borrow,  or  steal.  '  Good  people,'  I  cried 
earnestly,  '  throw  off  your  burdens  and 
stand  erect.  Few  are  they  who  are  helped 
by  books.'  " 

"  I  agree  with  you  there,"  said  the  Itin- 
erant ;  "  I  have  never  learnt  anything  from 
books.  One  only  gets  out  of  books  what 
one  brings  to  them:  that  is  to  say,  litera- 
ture, so  far  as  it  affects  the  individual, 
is  only  a  confirmation  of  his  experience." 

The  Man  Forbid  resumed  his  discourse 
without  heeding  the  Itinerant's   interrup- 


THE  MAN  FORBID  25 

tion.  "  '  Few^  are  they  who  are  helped  by 
books.  Will  you  die,  then,  crushed  under 
libraries?  The  printing-press  works  with- 
out ceasing ;  already  your  spines  are  curved 
by  the  weight  of  the  literature  of  thirty  cen- 
turies. Throw  it  all  off ;  stand  up  ;  and  see 
the  world  for  yourselves  —  day  and  night, 
and  life  and  death.  Do  not  think  the 
things  someone  has  said  of  these ;  but  keep 
watching  them,  and  you  will  become  excel- 
lent, for  we  are  what  we  contemplate ! ' 
But  they  mocked  me  and  told  me  the  story 
of  the  fox  who  lost  his  tail.  I  replied  with 
the  story  of  the  monkey,  who  also  lost 
his  tail  —  in  order  to  become  a  man !  I 
said  to  them,  '  Breajc  with  the  past.  All 
that  men  have  imagined,  thought  and 
felt  —  art,  philosophy,  and  religion  ;  all 
that  is  only  a  spiritual  tail  which  must  be 
got  rid  of  if  your  souls  are  to  develop.' 
But  they  laughed  me  to  scorn  and  pelted 
me  away  with  pamphlets  and  tomes.  Then 
I  ceased  to  concern  myself  with  the  world 
of   men,   and  fixed   my   mind   on   Nature. 


26  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Darkness  and  light,  colour  and  sound,  and 
life  and  death  filled  mc  with  their  unsay- 
ahle  meaning.  Again  I  turned  to  my 
bi-ethren,  straining  under  piled-up  libraries. 
I  could  not  refrain  from  the  attempt  to 
express  my  thought.  Not  being  a  musi- 
cian I  was  unfortunately  unable  to  employ 
pure  sound.  Language,  so  much  more 
dense  a  medium  than  music,  refracted  my 
meaning  sadly,  although  I  chose  my  words 
well.  Nevertheless  some  of  the  book-por- 
ters seemed  to  understand  my  songs,  and 
for  a  short  season  pronounced  them  beau- 
tiful and  true.  Only  for  a  time,  however; 
because  their  minds  were  so  preoccupied 
with  the  load  of  libraries  that  they  quickly 
tired  of  anything  else ;  and  once  more  re- 
sented bitterly  the  suggestion  that  they 
were  wasting  their  time  and  strength  in 
supporting  the  accumulated  thought  of 
thirty  centuries.  There  was  no  harbour 
for  me  among  men.  I  left  them,  and  grad- 
ually man  and  his  fate  became  indifferent 
to  me.     Then  also  Nature,  day  and  night, 


THE  MAN  FORBID  27 

and  life  and  death,  ceased  to  interest  me  — 
me,  a  feeble  inhabitant  of  one  of  the  most 
insignificant    spheres    among    myriads    of 
myriads    that    roll   in    space.     The    whole 
substantial  universe,  systems  and  suns,  and 
hfe  conscious   and  unconscious,  appeared 
to  me  only  the  momentary  and  impertinent 
irruption   of  a   shining,   sounding  spectre 
into  the  empty,   dark,  and  silent  infinite. 
And  all  this  —  nay,  I  shall  leave  you  with  a 
smile  • —  all  this  because  I  had  cut  my  spir- 
itual tail  off.     The  orang-outang,  I  sup- 
pose, sat  his  tail  off  in  the  course  of  many 
centuries.     At  any  rate,  you  will  not  make 
a  monkey  human  by  caudatomy.     Nor  will 
you  make  men  divine  by  cutting  them  off 
at  the  root.     It  was  a  false  analogy,  that 
of  the  tail.     Man  grows  out  of  the  past ; 
his  tap-roots  descend,  drawing  nourishment 
from  every  stratum,  and  are  warmed  by  the 
central  fire.     The  scission  of  the  smallest 
rootlet  will  hurt  his  growth.     It  is  not  un- 
derground that  he  must  tend  his  develop- 
ment, but  in  the  sunlight,  and  with  the 


28  THE  MAN  FORBID 

winds  and  the  dew.  I  have  warned  you. 
My  heart  is  a  husk ;  my  brain  a  mere  mir- 
ror. INIen  shrink  from  me.  I  am  indiffer- 
ent, and  feel  neither  joy  nor  grief;  but 
^ince  men  loathe  me,  I  know  that  they 
would  not  be  as  I  am.  You  keep  too  much 
alone ;  you  wander  about  on  the  Downs. 
Day  and  niglit,  life  and  death,  engage  your 
thought,  enthral  3^our  fancy.  The  ideas 
witli  which  men  have  filled  and  adorned 
their  environment,  the  ideas  which  they  per- 
ceive to  be  there,  are  distasteful  to  you. 
You  would  break  entirely  with  the  past. 
But  I  warn  you,  I  warn  you.  Resort  to 
the  knife,  and  you  will  find  that  it  is  not 
an  unbecoming  and  useless  tail  you  sever 
with  manful  stroke,  but  spiritual  suicide 
that  you  commit." 

The  Man  Forbid  vanished  as  suddenly  as 
he  came;  and  the  Itinerant  pulled  himself 
together.  Had  he  thought  of  using  the 
knife?  He  would  consider  the  matter  in 
his  study.  Meantime  night  was  thronging 
into  the  sky.     Behind  him  the  Downs  had 


THE  MAN  FORBID  29 

receded  and  sunk  low.  Beneath,  the  Nor- 
man tower  stood  up  shadowy,  a  ghostly 
dead  grey  against  the  darkening  sea.  The 
blue  slate  roofs,  the  red  tiles,  the  red  and 
yellow  chimneys  of  the  town,  appeared 
and  disappeared  in  the  gloaming,  dim 
flashes  of  colour  among  the  black  groups 
of  leafless  trees  in  the  churchyard  and  the 
gardens.  The  soft  white  plume  of  a  train, 
with  ruddy  under-feathers  glowing  in  the 
furnace  fire,  wheeled  through  the  swarthy 
branches.  Two  lamps  were  lit  in  a  narrow 
back  street.  Not  a  breath  of  wind  stirred. 
The  sunset,  burning  slowly,  smouldered  out 
above  the  sea ;  and  the  opposing  lamps, 
golden-hued,  took  heart  in  the  night.  The 
smoke  from  a  thousand  fires  curled  into  the 
air;  good  people  were  at  supper;  and  the 
sound  of  a  song  rose  faintly. 


PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISM 


PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISM 

NOW  is  "  a  voice  of  wailing  heard  and 
loud  lament  " ;  our  young  men  see 
visions  and  dream  dreams.  All  the  woe  of 
the  world  is  to  be  uttered  at  last.  Poetry 
has  been  democratised.  Nothing  could 
prevent  that.  The  songs  are  of  the  high- 
ways and  the  by-ways.  The  city  slums 
and  the  deserted  villages  are  haunted  by 
sorrowful  figures,  men  of  power  and  endur- 
ance, feeding  their  melancholy  not  with 
heroic  fable,  the  beauty  of  the  moon,  and 
the  studious  cloisters,  but  with  the  actual 
sight  of  the  misery  in  which  so  many  mil- 
lions live.  To  this  mood  the  vaunted 
sweetness  and  light  of  the  ineffective  apostle 
of  culture  are  like  a  faded  rose  in  a  char- 
nel-house, a  flash  of  moonshine  on  the  Dead 
Sea.      It  is  not  now  to  the  light  that  "  the 

33 


34  THE  MAN  FORBID 

passionate  heart  of  tlie  poet "  will  turn. 
In  vain  the  old  man  cried :  — 

Authors  —  essayist,   atheist,   novelist,  realist, 

rliymester,  play  your  part. 
Paint  the  mortal  shame   of  nature  with  the 

living  hues  of  art. 
Rip  your  hrothers'  vices  open,  strip  your  own 

foul  passions  bare; 
Down  with  Reticence,  down  with   Reverence 

—  forward  —  naked  —  let  them  stare. 

This  ironical  Balaam-curse  has  become  a 
message.  It  must  all  out.  The  poet  is 
in  the  street,  the  hospital.  He  intends  the 
world  to  know  that  it  is  out  of  joint.  He 
will  not  let  it  alone.  With  whatever 
trumpet  or  jew's-harp  he  can  command  he 
will  clang  and  buzz  at  its  ear,  disturbing 
its  sleep,  its  pleasures ;  discoursing  of  dark- 
ness and  of  the  terror  that  walks  by  night. 
"  Down  with  Reticence  "  —  that  kills  the 
patient ;  "  down  with  Reverence  "  —  for 
whatever  has  become  abominable.  Do  they 
delight  in  this  ?     No ;  it  is  only  that  it  is 


PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISM         35 

inevitable.     Democracy    is    here ;    and    we 
have  to  go  through  with  it. 

The  newspaper  is  one  of  the  most  potent 
factors  in  moulding  the  character  of  con- 
temporary poetry.  Perhaps  it  was  first  of 
all  the  newspaper  that  couched  the  eyes 
of  poetry.  Burns's  eyes  were  open. 
Blake's  also  for  a  time ;  and  Wordsworth 
had  profound  insight  into  the  true  char- 
acter of  man  and  of  the  world ;  but  all  the 
rest  saw  men  as  trees  walking;  Tennyson 
and  Browning  are  Shakespearian.  The 
prismatic  cloud  that  Shakespeare  hung  out 
between  poets  and  the  world !  It  was  the 
newspapers,  I  think,  that  brought  us  round 
to  what  may  be  called  an  order  of  Pre- 
Shakespearianism.  It  was  out  of  the  news- 
papers that  Thomas  Hood  got  "  The  Song 
of  the  Shirt  "  —  in  its  place  the  most  im- 
portant English  poem  of  the  nineteenth 
century ;  the  "  woman  in  unwomanly  rags 
plying  her  needle  and  thread  "  is  the  type 
of  the  world's  misery.  "  The  Song  of  the 
Shirt  "   is   the  most  terrible  poem   in   the 


36  THE  MAN  FORBID 

English  language.  Only  a  high  heart  and 
strong  brain  broken  on  the  wheel  of  life, 
but  master  of  its  own  pain  and  anguish, 
able  to  jest  in  the  jaws  of  death,  could 
have  sung  this  song,  of  which  every  single 
stanza  wrings  the  heart.  Poetry  passed  by 
on  the  other  side.  It  could  not  endure  the 
woman  in  unwomanly  rags.  It  hid  its  head 
like  the  fabled  ostrich  in  some  sand-bed  of 
Arthurian  legend,  or  took  shelter  in  the 
paradoxical  optimism  of  "  The  Ring  and 
the  Book."  It  is  true  William  Morris 
stood  by  her  when  the  priest  and  the  Levite 
passed  by.  He  stood  by  her  side,  he  helped 
her;  but  he  hardly  saw  her,  nor  could  he 
show  her  as  she  is.  "  Mother  and  Son,"  his 
greatest  poem,  and  a  very  great  poem,  is 
a  vision  of  a  deserted  Titaness  in  London 
streets ;  there  was  a  veil  also  between  him 
and  the  world,  although  in  another  sense, 
with  his  elemental  Sigurds,  he  is  the  truest 
of  all  Pre-Shakespearians.  But  the  woman 
in  unwomanly  rags,  and  all  the  insanity  and 
iniquity  of  which  she  is  the  type,  will  now 


PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISM         37 

be  sung.  Poetry  will  concern  itself  with 
her  and  hers  for  some  time  to  come.  The 
offal  of  the  world  is  being  said  in  statistics, 
in  prose  fiction:  it  is  besides  going  to  be 
sung.  James  Thomson  sang  it ;  and  others 
are  doing  so.  Will  it  be  of  any  avail  .^  We 
cannot  tell.  Nothing  that  has  been  done 
avails.  Poor-laws,  charity  organisations, 
dexterously  hold  the  wound  open,  or  ten- 
derly and  hopelessly  skin  over  the  cancer. 
But  there  it  is  in  the  streets,  the  hospitals, 
the  poor-houses,  the  prisons ;  it  is  a  flood 
that  surges  about  our  feet,  it  rises  breast- 
high.  And  it  will  be  sung  in  all  keys  and 
voices.  Poetry  has  other  functions,  other 
aims ;  but  this  also  has  become  its  province. 


BANDEROLE'S  ESTHETIC  BILL 


BANDEROLE'S  AESTHETIC  BILL 


i  ^TTOU'RE  gloomy,  Banderole." 
X       "I  always  am  in  March." 
"How's  that.?" 

"  Because   in   March   I   mourn   for   my 
Esthetic  Bill." 

"Your  ^Esthetic  Bill.?" 
"Yes,  have  you  never  heard  of  it.?" 
"  Never.     Tell  me  about  it.  Banderole." 
"  Shall  1?    Well,  I  suppose  I  may.     But 
I  must  premise.     Look  at  me,  Magsworth. 
If  you  were  to  characterise  me,  you  would 
say  that  I  am  a  man  of  a  passable  appear- 
ance,   with  —  ah  —  a    certain    undignified 
frankness  —  shall    we     call    it  ?  —  and    a 
pleasant  voice.      Come,  now,  we've  known 
each  other  for  about  a  week ;  and  that's 
your  opinion,  isn't  it.?     Well-spoken,  well- 
looking,     carelessly    frank  —  and    shrewd 
withal.?  " 

41 


42  THE  MAN  FORBID 

"  Yes ;  I  may  think  that  jou  are  per- 
haps a  little  partial  to  yourself;  but  that's 
about  my  opinion." 

''  Quite  so.  That  is  the  opinion  I  have 
of  myself;  that  is  the  opinion  all  my  new 
acquaintances  form  of  me ;  but  it  is  not  the 
opinion  of  my  old  friends ;  and  in  six 
months  it  will  cease  to  be  yours  if  you 
continue  knowing  me." 

"  I  shall  continue  knowing  you  if  for 
no  other  reason  than  to  test  the  truth  of 
what  you  say." 

"  Very  well.  It  was  not  until  I  was 
forty  that  I  discovered  what  my  intimates 
thought  of  me.  Until  my  fortieth  year, 
the  good-natured,  undemonstrative  defer- 
ence with  which  those  who  knew  me  best 
treated  me  appeared  to  me  a  tribute  to  my 
shrewdness.  I  use  the  word  '  shrewdness  ' 
now ;  six  years  ago  I  should  have  employed 
some  such  phrase  as  '  great  talents,'  '  in- 
disputable capacity,'  or  '  remarkable 
gifts  ' ;  but  I  have  had  a  lesson." 

"  Lessons  are  learnt  occasionally  even  in 


BANDEROLE'S  ESTHETIC  BILL      43 

these  days,  when  people  are  afraid  to 
acknowledge  that  they  were  ever  taken 
in  —  even  by  themselves." 

"  Quite  true.  One  day,  a  propos  of 
something  I  had  said,  an  acquaintance  ex- 
claimed, '  You  can't  mean  that !  It's  not 
in  keeping  with  the  transparent  simplicity 
of  your  character.'  I  forget  what  it  was  I 
had  said,  but  that  remark  about  myself  was 
a  revelation  to  me.  I  went  home  with  it, 
and  sat  down  and  thought  it  out.  Clearly 
my  intimates  considered  me  a  merely  in- 
genuous person ;  brusque  people  took  the 
edge  off  their  manners  in  dealing  with  me, 
not  because  they  feared  me,  but  because 
they  looked  upon  me  as  a  child;  and  the 
wind  was  tempered  for  me  generally.  It 
was  a  painful  process,  I  can  tell  you,  hav- 
ing my  eyes  couched  of  the  self-complacent 
belief  that  others  thought  me  a  thorough 
man  of  the  world.  Then  for  awhile  I  liked 
my  being  misunderstood.  To  have  the  rep- 
utation of  a  simpleton  and  to  be  a  Machi- 
avelli    is    to    enjoy    a    position    of    great 


44,  THE  MAN  FORBID 

power;  and  I  went  about  for  weeks  rev- 
elling in  a  perfect  analysis  of  the  motives 
of  all  my  acquaintances  —  I  saw  how  they 
wanted  to  protect  me,  to  aid  me,  to  save 
me ;  I  had  only  to  ask  for  a  thing  to  have 
it;  everybody  wished  to  be  able  to  say, 
'  I,  too,  did  something  for  that  dear  fel- 
low Banderole.'  I  tired  of  that,  however, 
and  determined  at  last  to  appear  in  my 
true  colours;  but  it  was  a  most  hopeless 
undertaking." 

"  It  has  been  said  that  there  is  nothing 
more  difficult  to  live  down  than  a  good 
reputation." 

"  And  well  said ;  I  found  it  so.  When 
I  did  anything  in  the  role  of  Machiavelli, 
people  took  it  as  a  joke,  and  it  was  decided 
that  my  simplicity  of  character  grew  daily 
more  transparent.  It  was  to  no  purpose 
that  I  said  the  bitterest  things  about  all 
my  friends ;  they  simply  quoted  them  to 
each  other  as  Banderole's  latest,  and  agreed 
that  none  but  a  man  of  the  most  ingenuous 
nature  could  have  detected  and  character- 


BANDEROLE'S  ESTHETIC  BILL      45 

ised  their  faults  and  foibles  so  unerringly. 
I  despaired  of  ever  appearing  as  I  really, 
am  in  the  ordinary  walks  of  life ;  so  after 
much  cogitation  I  hit  upon  a  distinctly 
original  idea.  Did  you  ever  have  a  dis- 
tinctly original  idea.''  " 

"  I'm  not  sure." 

"  Well,  if  you  ever  have  one,  you  will 
enjoy  it,  at  first;  and  then  you  will  be  in 
an  agony  till  you  make  up  your  mind 
what  to  do  with  it.  One's  first  penny  in 
one's  first  breeches'  pocket  is  an  icicle  com- 
pared to  one's  first  original  idea.  There 
are  so  many  things  you  can  do  with  an 
original  idea.  Ycu  may  exemplify  it  in 
your  life  — " 

"  And  get  run  in." 

"  You  may  put  it  into  a  magazine  ar- 
ticle — " 

"  And  be  snubbed  for  a  plagiarist.  You 
may  imbed  it  in  a  play,  or  bury  it  in  three 
volumes ;  you  may  paint  it,  or  carve  it,  or 
sing  it ;  and  nobody  will  look  at  it  or  listen 
to  it." 


46  THE  MAN  FORBID 

"  You  understand  the  matter.  But  if 
you  put  it  into  a  Bill  and  get  it  passed, 
why,  there  you  are  for  ever  and  ever  with 
the  British  Constitution.  So  I  drew  up  a 
Bill  incorporating  my  original  idea.  By 
that  Bill  I  expected  at  one  stride  to  step 
upon  a  pedestal  and  exhibit  once  for  all 
that  breadth  and  subtlety  which,  as  long  as 
I  was  only  one  man  more  in  the  street, 
escaped  the  observation  of  even  those  who 
knew  me  best." 

"  But  you  were  never  In  Parliament?  " 

"  No ;   but   the   Marquis    of   WagstafF's 

son  promised  to  get  his  father  to  introduce 

the  Bill  into  the  House  of  Lords.     You 

see,  it  was  really  a  sort  of  sumptuary  Bill, 

and  the  Lords  was  the  proper  place  for 

it,  I  was  told.     I  called  it  a  '  Bill  for  the 

Beautifying    of    Britain,'    or,    briefly,    an 

'  Esthetic  Bill.'  " 

"Umph!     Goon!" 

"  The  Bill  arranged  for  externals  only." 

"  Right.     If  the  outside  of  the  platter  be 


BANDEROLE'S  ESTHETIC  BILL      47 

clean,  it  follows  that  the  inside  will  also 
be  clean." 

"  I  am  glad  you  think  so.  It  was  my 
opinion.  I  have  found  that  the  best  shops 
make  the  finest  show,  in  spite  of  proverbs 
to  the  contrary.  I  made  no  attempt  to  be 
comprehensive,  believing  that,  if  in  one  or 
two  vast  concerns  an  aesthetic  reformation 
were  effected,  the  details  would  practically 
work  out  themselves.  I  began  with  rail- 
ways. My  Bill  provided  that  railways 
should  be  bordered  all  their  length  by  gar- 
dens, and  so  become,  as  it  were,  rivers  of 
flowers  flowing  across  and  along  the  whole 
land.  The  lines  themselves  were  to  be 
made  of  steel,  damascened  with  arabesques 
in  brass  and  silver.  The  stations  were  all 
to  be  castles,  kiosks,  pavilions,  with  draw- 
ing-rooms, dining-rooms,  smoking-rooms, 
upholstered  artistically.  I  worked  out  a 
new  type  of  carriage  superior  to  anything 
that  has  ever  been  seen  before ;  and  I  in- 
troduced a  clause  requiring  all  electricians. 


48  THE  MAN  FORBID 

under  a  heavy  penalty,  to  labour  at  the  de- 
velopment of  electro-motion.  I  made  it 
penal  to  advertise  in  railway  stations ;  but 
that  was  covered  by  a  general  clause  for- 
bidding all  mural  and  open-air  advertise- 
ment. It  seems  to  be  so  simple.  Stop 
advertising,  and  nobody  would  be  a  penny 
the  worse.  On  the  contrary,  a  great  many 
people  would  be  infinitely  better  in  temper 
and  digestion,  for  you  would  reduce  meas- 
urably the  worry  of  competition." 

"  And  what  about  those  whose  occupa- 
tions would  be  gone  —  advertising  agents 
and  bill-stickers  .P  " 

"  My  dear  Magsworth,  my  ^Esthetic 
Bill  provided  occupation  for  more  people 
than  are  ever  likely  to  want  work.  Con- 
sider the  immense  army  of  gardeners  re- 
quired for  the  railway  borders,  of  skilled 
craftsmen  to  keep  my  damascened  lines  in 
order.  In  everything  I  touched  I  provided 
work  —  artistic  w  ork  for  thousands." 

"  Yes  ;  but  about  this  advertising.  There 
are  many  miles  of  dead  wall  in  suburban 


BANDEROLE'S  ESTHETIC  BILL      49 

lines  that  would  be  even  more  sombre  and 
depressing  were  it  not  for  the  enamel  and 
colour  of  wines,  perfumery,  etc." 

"  I  would  have  the  bill-stickers  taught 
fresco-painting  —  they  can  already  wield  a 
brush ;  and  they  should  then  cover  these 
walls  with  designs  and  pictures." 

"And  the  economy  of  it?  How,  for 
example,  would  your  railways  pay?  " 

"  The  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  The 
Government  would,  of  course,  take  them  all 
over;  there  would  be  only  one  class  and 
one  fare  —  a  penny ;  you  would  stick  a 
stamp  in  3'our  hat  and  go  anywhere  — 
from  Charing  Cross  to  Westminster  or 
Wick.  What  would  be  the  result  of  such 
an  arrangement?  Why,  Britain  would 
practically  reside  on  its  railways ;  and  you 
would  have  on  every  line,  not  a  constant 
succession  of  trains,  but  one  long  unbroken 
train,  going  and  coming,  all  day,  all  night. 
And  the  income  —  I've  worked  it  out. 
Suppose  twenty  million  people  travelled  a 
day  —  and  I  consider  that  below  the  aver- 


50  THE  MAN  FORBID 

age  —  jou  would  liave,  at  a  penny  a  head, 
considerably  over  £30,000,000  per  annum  ; 
but  at  least  two-thirds  of  the  passengers 
would  return  the  same  day,  which  would 
give  you  a  gross  income  of  £50,000,000." 

"  Figures  like  these  speak  for  them- 
selves. And  how  did  you  get  on  with  Lord 
Wagstaff  ?  " 

"  Well,  when  I  had  the  Bill  drafted,  I 
read  it  to  Wagstaff's  son.  He  was  in  a 
hurry  at  the  time,  but  promised  to  tell  his 
father  about  it.  I  offered  to  send  him  a 
copy,  but  he  said  he  must  speak  about  it 
first.  Next  week  he  went  off  for  a  two- 
years'  tour  round  the  world,  and  I  don't 
believe  he  said  a  word  to  his  father,  for 
I  wrote  the  Marquis  three  times,  and  re- 
ceived no  reply.  It  was  in  March  I  drew 
up  my  Bill.  I  have  never  had  such  a  time 
of  pleasurable  excitement  since  —  hence  my 
gloom." 

"  And  you  never  got  on  the  pedestal?  " 

"  No.  Yet  I  expounded  my  bill  to  all 
my  friends.      It  is  my  unfortunate  reputa- 


BANDEROLE'S  ESTHETIC  BILL       51 

tion  as  a  merely  ingenuous  person  that 
stands  in  the  way.  I  have  overheard  peo- 
ple, after  the  most  eloquent  exposition,  say- 
ing, '  Sweet  soul,  Banderole,'  '  Delightful 
creature,'  '  So  simple  and  confiding.'  Now, 
Magsworth,  honestly,  tell  me  your  opinion 
of  my  Bill." 

"  I  really  haven't  time.  I  have  to  go  — 
I'm  afraid  I'm  off  on  a  two-years'  tour 
round  the  world." 


ON  WRITING  A  CAUSERIE 


ON  WRITING  A  CAUSERIE 

I  SUPPOSE  I  am  at  liberty  to  tell  the 
reader  that  this  is  my  first  causerie. 
Every  reviewer  thinks  he  can  write  a 
causerie,  and  doubtless  that  is  why  the  edi- 
tor has  asked  me  to  try  my  hand;  it  is  at 
least  a  new  experience  to  be  held  up  as  a 
warning  to  other  would-be  causeurs. 
Doubtless  some  people  are  bom  temble 
examples,  some  achieve  the  distinction,  and 
some,  like  me,  have  it  thrust  upon  them. 
It  is  satisfactory  to  know  that  the  more 
egregiously  I  fail,  the  greater  ought  to  be 
the  benefit  to  others.  Yet  nothing,  I  am 
afraid,  will  warn  aspiring  reviewers ;  like 
other  contributors  they  are  "  all  in  a  man- 
ner fierce,"  and  it  is  so  easy  to  say  "  / 
could  have  done  better." 

What  would  you  do  if  you  were  asked  to 


56  THE  MAN  FORBID 

fire  off  a  causcric,  your  first  causcric,  at 
an  hour's  notice? 

It  is  said  that  Horace  Vcrnct,  painting 
some  battle  or  other,  caused  a  constant 
fire  of  muskets  to  be  kept  up  in  his  atelier, 
and  worked  amid  the  noise  and  smoke  until 
the  picture  was  finished.  Why,  of  course, 
then,  when  you  arc  asked  for  a  literary 
causerie  point-blank,  you  will  load  your 
table  with  books  you  like  and  dip  into 
them  here  and  there  until  the  pure  liter- 
ary mood  flushes  your  nerves  and  the  fluent 
sentences  come.  And  with  the  sentences  a 
subject,  and  here  it  is:  The  Books  that 
have  a  Literary  Effect. 

Not  all  good  literature  has  invariably  a 
literary  effect.  One  of  the  best  of  our 
living  poets  finds  that  his  Muse  takes  wing 
whenever  he  reads  Milton.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  novelist  of  some  standing  screws 
his  courage  to  the  writing  mood  by  a  care- 
ful peinisal  of  the  advertisements  of  houses, 
etc.,  in  a  morning  paper.  Here,  indeed, 
the  law  of  contraries  may  seem  to  apply ; 


ON  WRITING  A  CAUSERIE        57 

and  yet,  though  Carlyle  prepared  himself 
for  the  task  of  rewriting  the  first  volume 
of  his  "  History  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion "  by  a  three  weeks'  debauch  of  jNIar- 
ryat's  novels,  Goethe  sought  inspiration 
for  his  Iphigenie  in  a  careful  copying  of 
Winckelmann's  drawings  of  Greek  sculp- 
ture. 

Literary  biography,  caressing  one  with 
the  triumphs  of  others,  is  a  sweet  incentive. 
To  read  of  the  easy  success  of  Scott  always 
gives  the  novelist  confidence.  Here  is 
Lockhart's  "  Life,"  the  most  enchanting, 
if  not  the  greatest  of  English  biographies. 
I  think  I  can  always  write  after  looking 
over  a  page  or  two  of  Lockhart ;  but  I 
will  not  betray  myself  to  the  Philistines  by 
reading  any  of  it  just  now.  Only,  I  must 
quote  one  passage.  This  is  the  first  op- 
portunity I  have  ever  had  of  doing  so : 
it  is  really  an  opportunity ;  I  did  not  men- 
tion Scott  in  the  interests  of  the  quotation. 
The  best  p'icce  of  writing  in  Lockhart's 
"  Life,"  after  some  passages  by  Scott  him- 


58  THE  MAN  FORBID 

self,  is,  in  my  opinion,  Mr.  Adolphus's  ac- 
count of  his  visit  to  Abbotsford,  and  the 
best  thing  in  INIr.  Adolphus's  account  is 
his  description  of  Scott's  laugh.  Having 
portrayed  Scott's  face,  with  a  particular 
stress  on  his  ejes,  Mr.  Adolphus  goes  on 
to  say  — 

Occasionally,  when  he  spoke  of  some- 
thing very  audacious  or  eccentric,  they  twould 
dilate  and  light  up  with  a  tragi-comic,  hare- 
brained expression  quite  peculiar  to  himself; 
one  might  see  in  it  a  whole  chapter  of 
"  Coeur-de-Lion  "  and  the  Clerk  of  Copman- 
hurst.  Never,  perhaps,  did  a  man  go 
through  all  the  gradations  of  laughter  with 
such  complete  enjoyment  and  a  countenance 
so  radiant.  The  first  dawn  of  a  humorous 
thought  would  show  itself  sometimes,  as  he 
sat  silent,  by  an  involuntary  lengthening  of 
the  upper  lip,  followed  by  a  shy,  sidelong 
glance  at  his  neighbours,  indescribably  whim- 
sical, and  seeming  to  ask  from  their  looks 
whether  the  spark  of  drollery  should  be  sup- 
pressed or  allowed  to  blaze  out.  In  the  full 
tide    of    mirth    he    did    indeed    "  laugh    the 


ON  WRITING  A  CAUSERIE       59 

heart's  laugh/'  like  Walpole;  but  it  was  not 
boisterous  and  overpowering,  nor  did  it  check 
the  course  of  his  words;  he  could  go  on  tell- 
ing or  descanting  while  his  lungs  did  "  crow 
like  chanticleer/'  his  syllables,  in  the  strug- 
gle, growing  more  emphatic,  his  accent  more 
strongly  Scotch,  and  his  voice  plaintive  with 
excess  of  merriment. 

This  is  surely  the  most  wonderful  de- 
scription of  a  laugh.  There  is  that  very 
crow  in  Shakespeare  referred  to  by  Mr. 
Adolphus,  and  there  is  also  that  exquisite 
Shakespearean,  "  he  will  laugh  you  till  his 
face  is  like  a  wet  cloth  ill  laid  up/'  and 
there  is  Carh'le's  description  of  Teufels- 
drockh's  laugh,  but  in  none  of  these  is  the 
conception,  gestation,  and  birth  of  the 
dimpled,  rosy  offspring  of  a  great  man's 
good-humour  traced  with  such  loving  art 
and  such  perfect  science  as  in  this  immortal , 
paragrapli  of  ]\Ir.  Adolphus's. 

Perhaps,  however,  writers,  when  not  in 
the  vein,  are  rather  coaxed  and  soothed 
to  their  work  bv  some  minor  writer  tliat 


60  THE  MAN  FORBID 

they  love  than  spurred  to  it  by  emulation 
of   the   greatest   men    of   letters.     Hazlitt 
is  such  a  source  of  inspiration.     No  one 
has  a  greater  indifference  to  what  has  been 
said  before  than  he.     He  is,  as  strikingly 
as  Byron,  the  creature  of  his  own  will.     He 
raises    or   lowers    his    subject    to    himself. 
"  He  exists  not  by  sympathy,  but  by  an- 
tipathy."    One  can  be  as  strained,  as  pet- 
ulant as  one  likes  —  one  can  say  anything, 
after  a  page   of  Hazlitt.     No,   not  any- 
thing ;  not  if  you  know  his  essay  on  Byron. 
That  pulls  a  man  up.     Hazlitt,  in  a  very 
fine  frenzy,  had  been  calling  Byron  names ; 
he  had  even  thought  very  little  of  "  our 
author's  turn  for  satire,"  and  had  "  written 
thus    far,"    when    news    came    of   Byron's 
death.    Immediately  Hazlitt  recognized  the 
peevish  strain  of  his  invective ;  he  had  not 
known  that  he  had  been  writing  Byron's 
epitaph.     Then    follows    a    very    splendid 
passage :   "  Death   cancels   everything  but 
truth,  and  strips  a  man  of  everything  but 
genius  and  virtue.     It  is  a  sort  of  natural 


ON  WRITING  A  CAUSERIE       61 

canonisation.  It  makes  the  meanest  of 
us  sacred ;  it  instals  the  poet  in  his  immor- 
tahty;  and  lifts  him  to  the  skies.  We 
consign  the  least  worthy  qualities  to  ob- 
livion, and  cherish  the  nobler  and  imper- 
ishable nature  with  double  pride  and  fond- 
ness."    Hazlitt  was  a  great  man. 

Here  I  have  written  something  which  is 
neither  essay  nor  review,  and  which' — ■ 
need  not  therefore  be  a  causerie !  I  see  a 
subject,  nibble  about  it  a  little,  and  then 
go  off  and  lug  out,  as  if  it  were  a  new 
discovery,  a  famous  old  quotation  that 
everybody  knows.  Then  I  make  another 
dash  at  the  subject,  and  —  take  refuge  in 
another  quotation.  It  is  at  least,  I  hope, 
one  way  of  writing  a  causerie,  although  I 
have  mentioned  only  two  out  of  twenty 
books  I  laid  on  my  table. 

The  unmethodical  way,  let  us  call  it. 
Want  of  faculty,  when  rightly  considered, 
is  really  a  kind  of  faculty.  If  one  really 
possesses  a  talent  for  doing  things  the 
wrong  way,  the  power  of  putting  the  cart 


62  THE  MAN  FORBID 

before  the  horse  with  infalhble  exactitude, 
and  an  irresistible  tendency  towards  the 
employment  of  that  figure  which  gram- 
marians call  hysteron-proteron,  one  may  be 
said  to  have  a  gift. 

Still,  it  is  well  to  be  modest:  this  may 
not  be  a  causerie,  after  all.  It  is  true  — 
as  Isabey  said  —  that  to  paint  a  picture  is 
not  a  question  of  drinking  the  sea :  "  It  is 
simply  a  matter  of  taking  a  few  of  the 
colours  on  my  palette  and  spreading  them 
upon  a  piece  of  canvas."  But  Isabey  said 
also  to  another  painter,  "  Decidedly  you 
were  born  to  be  a  surgeon.  Your  voca- 
tion dominates  you:  you  wish  to  paint  a 
boat  and  you  paint  a  tumour." 

Many  men  always  sneer  at  themselves 
when  they  have  done  their  best. 

\ 


THE  CRITICISM  OF  POETRY 


THE    CRITICISM   OF   POETRY 

ANYONE  who  has  ever  trusted  himself 
knows  that  knowledge  is  in  the  air; 
and  that  in  brooding,  in  loafing,  in  living, 
knowledge  is  absorbed  by  the  pores  of  the 
body.  The  eyes  and  the  ears  are  the  main 
thoroughfares  of  knowledge,  but  there  are 
many  by-ways  intractable  to  sight  and 
hearing,  devious  and  erratic  in  supposition, 
but  as  marked  and  inevitable  as  the  seem- 
ingly wanton  paths  of  fish  in  the  river  or  of 
birds  in  the  air.  The  body,  the  whole 
body,  is  also  the  soul.  It  is  the  nerves,  the 
heart,  the  liver,  the  germs  of  life  that  ap- 
prehend and  think  and  feel.  The  seat  of 
memory  is  probably  in  the  muscles.  The 
brain  is  only  a  register  and  sifter  —  at  the 
highest  an  alembic.  Imagination  gathers 
the  flower  of  the  whole  anatomy.  It  is  in 
this  that  the  poet  differs  from  the  thinker, 

65 


66  THE  MAN  FORBID 

with  wlioin  it  is  the  habit  at  present  to  con- 
found liini.  A  thinker  is  one  who  has  per- 
mitted his  brain,  the  chief  servant  of  his 
soul,  to  get  the  upper  hand,  just  as  the  epi- 
cure gives  the  reins  of  power  to  his  pahite. 
In  the  poet  the  whole  assembly  of  his  being 
is  harmonious ;  no  organ  is  master ;  a  dia- 
pason extends  throughout  the  entire  scale ; 
his  whole  body,  his  whole  soul  is  rapt  into 
the  making  of  his  poetry.  Every  poet  is  a 
new  experiment ;  all  poetry  is  empirical. 
And  this  is  simply  saying  over  again  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  poetry,  and  that 
poets  are  born  into  the  world ;  but  as  poets 
and  poetry  are  rare,  it  may  be  no  disservice, 
remembering  that  such  a  thing  as  a  "  boom 
in  poets  "  has  been  talked  of,  to  remind  the 
running  reader  that  the  poet  is  the  most 
exceptional  of  men. 

How  is  poetry  to  be  recognised.?  Lit- 
erary criticism  has  a  comparative  method, 
the  employment  of  a  foot-rule  or  tape-line 
obtained  by  the  study  of  accepted  poetry, 
a  method  not  altogether  to  be  despised.     It 


THE  CRITICISM  OF  POETRY       67 

is,  of  course,  the  only  possible  method  of 
dealing  with  the  huge  body  of  imitative 
verse ;  but  it  does  not  commend  itself  to 
me  in  the  criticism  of  actual  poetry  except 
as  a  most  subsidiary  aid.  Poetry  is  the 
product  of  originality,  of  a  first-hand  ex- 
perience and  observation  of  life,  of  a  direct 
communion  with  men  and  women,  with  the 
seasons  of  the  year,  with  day  and  night. 
The  critic  will  therefore  be  well  advised,  if 
he  have  the  good  fortune  to  find  something 
that  seems  to  him  poetry,  to  lay  it  out  in 
the  da3^]ight  and  the  moonlight,  to  take 
it  into  the  street  and  the  fields,  to  set 
against  it  his  own  experience  and  obser- 
vation of  life,  and,  should  he  be  a  poet 
himself,  to  remember  how  it  was  that  he 
wrote  his  own  poetry.  In  this  way  I  re- 
duce culture,  which  is  only  experience  at 
second-hand,  to  its  proper  place  as  the 
merest  handmaid  of  criticism. 

It  seems  to  me  that  Mr.  Victor  J.  Daley's 
"  At  Dawn  and  Dusk  "  deserves,  in  some 
measure,  this  actual  criticism.     The  influ- 


68  THE  MAN  FORBID 

ence  of  Mr.  Swinburne  is  apparent  in 
"  Years  Ago,"  of  Poe  in  the  series  jcalled 
"  Fragments,"  and  of  other  poets  in  his 
ballads  and  sonnets.  But  "In  a  Wine 
Cellar "  is  an  authentic  Australian  poem 
by  an  Australian  poet :  — 

No  vintage  alien 

For  thee  or  me ! 
Our  fount  Castalian 

Of  poesy 
Shall  wine  Australian, 

None   other   be. 

It  has  no  glamour 

Of  old  romance. 
Of  war  or  amour 

In  Spain  or  France; 
Its  poets  stammer 

As  yet,  perchance; 

But  he  may  wholly 

Become  a  seer 
Who  quaffs  it  slowly; 

For  he  shall  hear. 
Though  faintly,  lowly. 

Yet  sweet  and  clear. 


THE  CRITICISM  OF  POETRY      69 

The  axes  ringing 

On  mountain  sides, 
The  wool-boats  swinging 

Down  Darling  tides. 
The  drovers  singing 

Where  Clancy  rides. 

The  miners  driving, 
The  stockman's  strife; 

All  sounds  conniving 
To  tell  the  rife. 

Rich,  rude,  strong-striving 
Australian  life. 

Once  more  your  hand  in 

This  hand  of  mine! 
And  while  we  stand  in 

The  brave  sunshine. 
Pledge  deep  our  land  in 

Our  land's  own  wine ! 

This  is  new  and  free.  In  "  The  Poet 
Care,"  there  is  the  same  freshness,  the 
same  novelty. 

Care  is  a  poet  fine: 

He  works  in  shade  or  shine. 


70  THE   MAN   FORBID 

And  leaves  —  you  know  his  sign  !  — 
No  day  without  its  line. 

He  writes  with  iron  pen 
Upon  the  brows  of  men ; 
Faint  lines  at  first,  and  then 
He  scores  them  in  again. 

Then  deeper  script  appears : 
The  furrows  of  dim  fears. 
The  traces  of  old  tears. 
The  tide-marks  of  the  years. 

To  him,  with  sight  made  strong 
By  suffering  and  wrong, 
The  brows  of  all  the  throng 
Are  eloquent  with  song. 

It  is  not  to  the  purpose  to  say  that  this 
has  been  said  and  sung  before.  It  is  here 
sung  newly,  at  first-hand,  by  a  poet  living 
at  this  present  day  in  the  fifth  continent 
of  the  world.  Adam  and  Eve  said  it  to 
each  other  when  they  began  to  grow  old. 
But  it  is  all  to  say  over  again ;  it  is  the 
mission    of   the    poet   to    state    the    world 


THE  CRITICISM  OF  POETRY       71 

afresh.  The  critic  of  words  and  phrases 
will  find  much  to  except  in  Mr.  Daley's  po- 
etry, although  some  of  his  workmanship 
is  excellent,  especially  in  his  more  conven- 
tional pieces :  "  The  River  Maiden,"  and 
"  His  Mate  "  are  particularly  fine.  But 
academic  questions  of  rhyme,  rhythm,  and 
diction  have  little  more  to  do  with  poetry 
than  epaulettes  and  pipeclay  have  to  do 
with  strategy.  Poetry  is  not  always  an 
army  on  parade ;  sometimes  it  is  an  army 
coming  back  from  the  wars,  epaulettes  and 
pipe-clay  all  gone,  shoeless,  ragged, 
wounded,  starved,  but  with  victory  on  its 
brows. 


tete-1-t:&te 


TETE-X-TETE 

Cosmo  Mortimer.       Ninian  Jamieson. 

NINIAN  JAMIESON.     Among  your 
many  theories,  have  you  a  theory  of 
poetry,  Cosmo? 

Cosmo  Mortimer.  I  have !  I  have  a 
theory  of  poetry.  Poetry  is  that  which 
had  better  not  be  expressed ;  silence  being 
impossible,  poetry  endeavours  to  atone  its 
betrayal  of  secrets  by  beauty  of  utterance. 
It  is  a  question,  however,  if  perfect  form 
is  a  sufficient  excuse  for  lyric  poetry.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  defend  the  direct  ex- 
pression of  passion  and  emotion,  and  its 
publication  by  one  man  for  others  to  read. 
For  my  own  part  all  lyric  poetry,  "  The 
Battle  of  the  Baltic,"  or  a  sonnet  of 
Shakespeare's,  Shelley's  "  Cloud "  or  a 
love-song  of  Burns,  holds  me  shamefast. 

75 


76  THE  MAN  FOUBID 

I  read  such  things  furtively,  and  shp  the 
book  under  a  cushion  and  swear  at  the 
poodle  if  I'm  dropped  on. 

N.  J.  Then  you'll  have  small  regard 
for  the  poetry  of  women. 

C.  M.  I  can't  endure  it.  But  of  course 
you  know  I  think  women  constitutionally 
inferior  to  men. 

N.  J,     But  intellectually.'' 

C.  M.  Yes,  of  course;  intellectually 
women  have  far  and  away  the  best  of  it. 
Since  the  world  began,  their  intellects  have 
been  unintentionally  trained  at  all  hazards. 
The  result  is  that  they  can  neither  think 
nor  feel.  They  have  not  been  allowed  to 
eat  and  drink  as  much  as  men,  to  use 
their  limbs  with  the  freedom  of  men,  to 
see  all  sides  of  life,  to  take  an  unrestricted 
share  in  the  work  of  the  world,  to  wander, 
to  loaf,  to  disregard  conventions ;  their 
muscles,  their  nerves,  their  blood,  and  their 
vital  organs,  the  seats  of  thought  and  emo- 
tion, are  in  a  state  of  hebetation  compared 
with  those  of  men.     But  their  intellects  — 


TETE-A-TETE  77 

by  intellect  I  mean  brain,  you  understand 
—  their  intellects  are  developed  so  dispro- 
portionately as  to  constitute  the  one  por- 
tent in  the  world.  It  is  the  intellect  of 
woman  unprovided , with  proper  food  and 
exercise  of  personal  experience  which  has 
built  up  Society  as  unconsciously  as  the 
coral  insect  makes  continents;  blindly, 
ruthlessly,  with  an  hourly  sacrifice  pitched 
into  the  streets  of  a  percentage  of  the 
healthiest  womanhood.  Woman  rules  the 
world;  the  thirty  million  wretched  males, 
drilled  and  batoned  into  utter  cowardice, 
in  order  that  they  may  submit  to  be  shot 
down  at  long  range  in  cold  blood,  have 
their  monstrous  being  solely  that  women 
may  reign  and  be  suppc/ted  in  ever-grow- 
ing comfort  or  luxury  by  the  remaining 
males. 

N.  J.  It  is  a  helpful  point  of  view, 
Cosmo ;  no  doubt  of  it.  But  you  are  very 
discursive.  We  began  with  a  theory  of 
poetry;  and  I  started  the  subject  because 
I  am  curious  to  know  what  you  think  of 


78  THE  MAN  FORBID 

this.  It  is  from  a  poem  called  "  INIotlicr- 
hood  "  in  a  volume  entitled  "  In  This  Our 
World  "  *  by  a  poet  of  the  name  of  Stet- 
son. 

C  M.     Stetson.?     Don't  know  him. 

N.  J.     American.     Now :  — 

Motherhood:  seeing  with  her  clear  kind  eyeSj 
Luminous^  tender  eyes,  wherein  the  smile 
Is  like  the  smile  of  sunlight  on  the  sea, 
That  the  new  children  of  the  newer  day 
Need  more  than  any  single  heart  can  give, 
More  than  is  known  to  any  single  mind, 
More  than  is  found  in  any  single  house. 
And  need  it  from  the  day  they  see  the  light. 
Then,  measuring  her  love  by  what  they  need, 
Gives  from  the  heart  of  modern  motherhood. 
Gives  first,  as  tree  to  bear  God's  highest  fruit, 
A  clean,  strong  body,  perfect  and  full  grown. 
Fair  for  the  purpose  of  its  womanhood, 
N/)t  for  light  fancy  of  a  lower  mind: 
Gives  a  clear  mind,  athletic,  beautiful. 
Dispassionate,  unswerving  from  the  truth; 

*  Small,   Maynard  &   Co.,   Boston.     G.   P.  Put- 
nam's Sons,  London. 


TETE-A-TETE  79 

Gives  a  great  heart  that  throbs  with  human 

love, 
As  she  would  wish  her  son  to  love  the  world. 
Then,  when  the  child  comes  lovely  as  a  star, 
She,  in  the  peace  of  primal  motherhood. 
Nurses  her  baby  with  unceasing  joy, 
With  milk  of  hu^an  kindness,  human  health. 
Bright  Imman  beauty,  and  immortal  love. 
And  then.^     Ah!   here  is   the   New   Mother- 
hood — 
The     motherhood     of     the     fair     new-made 

world  — 
O  glorious  New  Mother  of  New  Men! 

What  do  you  think  of  it.? 

C.  M.  Well,  the  verse  itself  is  not  inter- 
esting ;  but  the  matter  is  good  didactic  stuff 
of  its  kind.  Clearly  the  work  of  a  manly 
fellow. 

N.  J.  This  writer's  rhymed  verse  is 
better,  I  admit.  Stetson  has  distinct  gifts 
of  irony.  In  "  An  Obstacle  "  a  "  hulking 
prejudice  sat  all  across  the  road,"  immov- 
able by  entreaty,  passion,  invective,  until  at 
last  — 


80  THE  MAN  FORBID 

I  took  my  hat,  I  took  my  stick, 

My  load  I  settled  fair, 
I  approached  that  awful  incubus 

With  an  absent-minded  air  — 
And  I  walked  directly  through  him. 

As  if  he  wasn't  there. 

That's   good;   and   so   is  this   "A   Brood 
Mare  "  —  a  healthy,  broad  horse-laugh ;  — 

I  had  a  quarrel  yesterday, 

A  violent  dispute, 
With  a  man  who  tried  to  sell  to  me 

A  strange,  amorphous  brute. 

Said  I,  "  Do  you  pretend  to  say 
You  can  raise  colts  as  fair 

From  that  cripple  as  you  can 
From  an  able-bodied  mare?  " 

Quoth  he,  "  I  solemnly  assert. 

Just  as  I  said  before, 
A  mare  that's  good  for  breeding 

Can  be  good  for  nothing  more." 

Cried  I,  "  One  thing  is  certain  proof; 
One  thing  I  want  to  see; 


TETE-A-T^TE  81 

Trot  out  the  noble  colts  you  raise 
From  your  anomaly." 

He  looked  a  little  dashed  at  this. 
And  the  poor  mare  hung  her  head, 
"  Fact  is/'  said  he,  "  She's  had  but  one; 
And  that  one  —  well,  it's  dead  !  " 

C  M.  A  passable  stable  joke  with  a 
crude  application  to  the  coddling  of 
women. 

N.  J.  If  poetry  is,  as  you  assert,  that 
which  had  better  not  be  expressed,  how 
does  that  rank.? 

C.  M.  No  class,  my  dear  sir!  It  is 
exactly  what  must  be  expressed,  and  con- 
sidered until  the  eyelids  ache.  Here  is  a 
man  in  earnest,  as  no  woman  can  ever  be ; 
he  uses  any  j^eapon  that  comes  to  hand, 
hit  or  miss,  poetry  or  doggerel.  Note 
that  a  woman  would  never  do  that ;  she 
would  lose  the  battle  searching  for  an  agate 
for  her  catapult,  while  the  man  was  sling- 
ing mud  and  macadam  all  the  time. 

N.  J.     Ha  !     Well ;  listen  to  this :  — 


82  THE  iMAN  FORBID 

The  female  fox  she  is  a  fox; 

The  female  whale  a  whale; 
The  female  eagle  holds  her  place 
As  representative  of  race 

As  truly  as  the  male. 
One  female  in  the  world  we  find 

Telling  a  different  tale. 
It  is  the  female  of  our  race 
Who  holds  a  parasitic  place, 

Dependent  on  the  male.     .     .     . 
The  race  is  higher  than  the  sex, 

Though  sex  be  fair  and  good; 
A  human  creature  is  your  state. 
And  to  be  human  is  more  great 

Than  even  womanhood ! 

C.  M.  I  understand  Mr.  Stetson  now; 
I  see  what  he  is  driving  at.  The  fight  be- 
tween the  sexes  which,  with  the  help  of 
Christianity,  ended  in  the  triumph  of  the 
female,  and  the  establishment  of  marriage, 
the  family  and  home,  he  wishes  to  see  re- 
newed. He  would  have  women  dethroned 
and  brought  down  into  the  arena  to  com- 
pete with  men  —  not  some  women,  but  all 


T^TE-A-T^TE  8S 

women.  Probably  he  is  right;  it  is  the 
tendency  of  things  at  present.  But  before 
women  elect  to  fight  they  should  know 
that  they  have  everything  to  lose ;  and  once 
they  abdicate,  they  can  never  possibly 
attain  again  to  the  high  position  they  have 
held  for  several  centuries.  In  the  arena 
they  would  be  beaten ;  and  would  imme- 
diately begin  again,  however  unconsciously, 
to  build  upon  their  sex,  not  upon  their 
humanity  —  accepting  Mr.  Stetson's  dis- 
tinction —  a  latter,  inferior  empire  of  mar- 
riage, family,  and  home;  it  is  the  nature 
of  the  female  to  nidify.  Her  intellect, 
functioning  as  instinct,  leads  her  infal- 
libly to  dominion ;  but  the  moment  she 
employs  intellect  consciously  as  intellect, 
society  will  dissolve;  man  will  once  more 
become  a  hunter ;  woman,  a  captive  breeder 
and  beast  of  burden. 

N.  J.  But  you  said  just  now  that  the 
intellect  of  woman  constitutes  the  one  por- 
tent in  the  world. 

C.  M.     So  it  does ;  because  she  is  becom- 


84  THE  MAN  FORBID 

ing  conscious  of  it.  She  begins  to  know 
that  her  brain  is,  to  start  with,  a  more  subtle 
and  powerful  organ  than  man's ;  further, 
she  feels  that  it  has  been  developed  to 
prodigious  form  and  pliancy  by  thousands 
of  years  of  intrigue,  chicanery,  stratagem 
in  securing  against  all  the  individual  in- 
terests of  the  male  a  soft  nest  for  herself 
and  her  young.  "  Now,"  she  says,  "  now ; 
I  shall  have  my  own  again !  This  slow 
brain,  this  dull  procreating  brute  of  a  man 
shall  be  put  in  his  place  at  last.  He  shall 
know  that  I  have  been  his  conqueror  all 
the  time."  That  will  precipitate  the  sex- 
ual fight  in  its  elemental  form ;  and  then  it 
is  the  big,  hard  chest  able  to  endure  a  bat- 
tering-ram that  wins  in  the  long  run,  brain 
or  no  brain. 

N.     J.      Let     me     read     you     another 
verse : — 

For  the  sake  of  my  child  I  must  hasten  to 

save 
All  the  children  on  earth  from  the  jail  and 

the  grave. 


TETE-A-TETE  85 

For  so,  and  so  only,  I  lighten  the  share 
Of  the  pain  of  the  world  that  my  darling  must 
bear. 

You  see :  this  American  poet  is  a  woman 
—  Mrs.  Chaklotte  Perkins  Stetson. 

C.  M.  There  you  are !  She  makes  me 
think  she  is  a  man !  Women  are  orchids ; 
there  is  no  end  of  their  deceptive  appear- 
ances. 


A  SPIRIT 


A    SPIRIT 

MR.  YEATS  uses  the  wind  as  a  sym- 
bol of  desires  and  hopes :  "  Wind 
and  spirit  and  vague  desire  have  been  asso- 
ciated everywhere."  His  poems,  in  "  The 
Wind  among  the  Reeds,"  are  like  the  breath 
of  a  spirit,  a  keen  and  exquisite  song. 

Had  I  the  heavens'  embroidered  cloths, 

Enwrought  with  gold  and  silver  light. 
The  blue  and  the  dim  and  the  dark  cloths 

Of  night  and  light  and  the  half  light, 
I  would  spread  the  cloths  under  your  feet: 

But  I,  being  poor,  have  only  my  dreams; 
I  have  spread  my  dreams  under  your  feet; 

Tread    softly    because    you    tread    on    my 
dreams. 

Tread  softly,  because  it  is  not  a  mortal 
dream  that  the  winds  awaken.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  believe   that   Mr.   Yeats   has   not 

89 


90  THE  MAN  FORBID 

been  dead  for  many  years,  and  now  revisits 
the  glimpses  of  the  moon,  the  first  trav- 
eller to  return  from  the  undiscovered  coun- 
try. He  has  at  least  been  with  the  Sidhe, 
the  people  of  the  Faery  Hills,  whose  realm 
is  not  to  be  frequented  with  impunity  if 
one  would  retain  an  interest  in  ordinary 
things.  Although  free  of  their  company, 
Mr.  Yeats  has  not  yet  lost  human  sym- 
pathies, as  the  delightful  "  Fiddler  of 
Dooney,"   will  tell :  — 

When  I  play  on  my  fiddle  in  Dooney, 
Folk  dance  like  a  wave  of  the  sea; 

My  cousin  is  priest  in  Kilvarnet, 
My  brother  in  Maharabuiee. 

I  pass  my  brother  and  cousin: 

They  read  in  their  books  of  prayer; 

I  read  in  my  book  of  songs 
I  bought  at  the  Sligo  fair. 

When  we  come,  at  the  end  of  time, 

To  Peter  sitting  in  state. 
He  will  smile  on  the  three  old  spirits, 

But  call  me  first  through  the  gate; 


A  SPIRIT  91 

For  the  good  are  always  the  merry. 

Save  by  an  evil  chance, 
And  the  merry  love  the  fiddle. 

And  the  merry  love  to  dance: 

And  when  the  folk  there  spy  me. 

They  will  all  come  up  to  me, 
With  "  Here  is  the  fiddler  of  Dooney! 

And  dance  like  a  wave  of  the  sea. 

Even  here,  however,  the  human  sym- 
pathy is  three  parts  tolerance ;  Mr.  Yeats's 
heart  in  this  volume  "  goes  out "  most 
fully  to  a  time  "  when  the  stars "  shall 
"be  blown  about  the  sky  like  the  sparks 
blown  out  of  a  smithy." 

It  is  the  recurrent  burden  — 

While   time   and   the   world   are    ebbing 

away 
In  twilight  of  dew  and  of  fire. 

The  wind  cries  in  the  sedge  to  the  wan- 
dering Aedh: 

Until  the  axle  break 

That  keeps  the  stars  in  their  roimd, 


92  THE  MAN  FORBID 

And  hands  hurl  in  the  deep 
The  banner  of  east  and  west. 
And  the  girdle  of  light  is  unbound, 
Your  head  will  not  lie  on  the  breast 
Of  your  beloved  in  sleep. 

And  in  the  meantime  the  Sidhe  call,  and 
come  between  the  poet  and  the  world  of 
men  and  women.  In  their  company  he 
has  attained  a  knowledge  and  insight  into 
the  way  and  beings  of  the  twiliglit,  un- 
seconded  in  our  time.  By  reason  of  this 
he  is  an  original  poet  of  note.  It  is  the 
Sidlie  that  point  out  to  him : 

Old  men  playing  at  cards 

With  a  twinkling  of  ancient  hands, 

and  that  tell  him  how  to  describe  "  pearl-, 
pale  "  fingers  and  "  dove-grey  "  seaboards. 
His  song  is,  indeed,  like  the  voice  of  a  dis- 
embodied spirit.  Secrets  are  known  to 
him.  He  has  a  passport  for  the  debatable 
land  between  the  living  and  the  dead;  its 
marches  are  his  daily  walk;  and  his  con- 
versation is  with  Caolte,  who  was  a  flaming 


A  SPIRIT  93 

man,  with  Niam,  the  beautiful  woman  who 
led  Oisin  to  the  Country  of  the  Young, 
and  with  his  own  creatures,  Aedh,  Hanra- 
han,  and  Michael  Robartes,  who  are  to  him 
"  principles  of  the  mind,"  rather  "  than 
actual  personages."  With  these  are  his 
walk  and  conversation,  and  with  the  living 
seers  of  Ireland;  for  it  is  all  actual,  and 
his  first-hand  acquaintance  with  the  extant 
faery  lore  of  his  country  quickens  his 
whole  treatment  of  fairy  mythology.  Such 
a  passage  as  the  following  in  Mr.  Yeats's 
copious  notes  brings  the  reader  face  to 
face  with  the  subject  in  the  flesh  and  in 
the  spirit.  "  I  once,"  says  Mr.  Yeats,  in 
his  own  person, 

"  stood  beside  a  man  in  Ireland  when  he  saw 
it  (the  Tree  of  Life)  growing  there  in  a 
vision,  that  seemed  to  have  rapt  him  out  of 
the  body.  He  saw  the  Garden  of  Eden 
walled  about,  and  on  the  top  of  a  high  moun- 
tain, as  in  certain  mediaeval  diagrams ;  and 
after  passing  the  Tree  of  Knowledge,  on 
wliich  grew  fruit  full  of  troubled  faces,  and 


94,  THE  MAN  FORBID 

through  whose  branches  flowed,  he  was  told, 
sap  that  was  human  souls,  he  came  on  a  tall 
dark  tree  with  little  bitter  fruits,  and  was 
shown  a  kind  of  stair  or  ladder  going  up 
through  the  tree,  and  told  to  go  up;  and  near 
the  top  of  the  tree  a  beautiful  woman,  like 
the  Goddess  of  Life  associated  with  the  tree 
in  Assyria,  gave  him  a  rose  that  seemed  to 
have  been  growing  upon  the  tree." 

In  another  note  Mr.  Yeats  writes : 

"  A  faery  doctor  has  told  me  that  his  wife 
'  got  the  touch  '  at  her  marriage  because  there 
was  one  of  them  (the  Sidhe)  wanted  her;  and 
the  way  he  knew  for  certain  was,  that  when 
he  took  a  pitchfork  out  of  the  rafters,  and 
told  her  it  was  a  broom,  she  said,  '  It  is  a 
broom.'  She  was,  the  truth  is,  in  the  magi- 
cal sleep,  to  which  people  have  given  a  new 
name  lately,  that  makes  the  imagination  so 
passive  that  it  can  be  moulded  by  any  voice 
in  any  world  into  any  shape." 

These  passages,  without  the  poems, 
would  show  that  Mr.  Yeats  is  no  mere  anti- 
quarian ;  that  he  is  not  actuated  by  a  tame 


A  SPIRIT  95 

literary  interest  in  faery  lore.  They  show 
that  he  has  a  Hving  and  intellectual  regard 
for  what  is  to  most  only  a  faded  mythol- 
ogy, and  that  he  is  of  an  individuality  rare 
at  any  time,  rarest  in  ours. 


TETE-X-T^TE 


tete-\-t:^te 

Parolles.  Hamlet. 

PAROLLES.  I  have  desired  much  to 
meet  you,  my  lord,  in  this  limbo 
where  we  now  are.  It  has  been  my  life- 
long habit  to  frequent  the  company  of 
my  betters ;  and  —  Oh  no  !  my  lord !  you 
must  not  give  me  the  go-by.  Nor  could 
you:  I  stick  like  a  burr.  If  you  will  not 
talk  with  me  now,  you  may  come  to  do  so 
in  some  more  relaxed  mood,  when  your 
loquacity — for  you  are  as  talkative  as  I  am 
—  might  lead  you  to  say  more  than  your 
memory  would  delight  to  recall  as  a  no- 
secret  shared  with  so  ill  a  counsellor. 

Ham.  You  are  of  the  same  forge  and 
bellows  as  myself  —  that  world  within  the 
world  which  Shakespeare  made.  I  will  talk 
with  you  now. 

99 


100  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Par.  It  is  of  this  world  of  Shakes- 
peare's making  that  I  would  talk. 

Ham.  Sometimes  I  think  it  is  the  only 
world.  Shakespeare  found  the  world  an 
empty  nut  and  put  a  kernel  into  it. 

Par.  Maybe ;  but  human  intelligence 
has  eaten  and  digested  that  kernel  at  last, 
and  the  shell  yawns  for  a  new  lining. 
Shakespeare,  my  lord,  has  been  found  out. 
It  is  I  who  am  Shakespeare,  not  you. 
As  I  said  three  hundred  years  ago. 

Who  knows  himself  a  braggart. 
Let  him  fear  this ;  for  it  will  come  to  pass 
That  every  braggart  shall  be  found  an  ass. 

I  have  come  into  my  own  again,  my  lord. 
Hitlierto,  Shakespearian  has  meant  simply 
Hamletian.  The  good-natured  world  — 
for  the  actual  world  is  at  the  last  and  in  the 
gross  exceedingly  thoughtless  and  agree- 
able —  I  say,  my  lord,  the  good-natured 
world,  highly  flattered  at  its  supposed  re- 
flection, dressed  its  mind  in  the  magic  mir- 
ror of  Hamlet,  and  fancied  itself  Shakes- 


TStE-A-TETE  101 

pearian.  But  Hamlet  and  Prospero  are 
only  the  vanity  of  Shakespeare.  I,  Parol- 
les,  am  the  true  Shakespeare;  and  I  can 
prove  it. 

Ham.  It  Is  possible  to  prove  anything 
by  circumstantial  evidence.  Go  on ;  I  con- 
sented to  talk  with  you. 

Par.  I  am  the  true  Shakespeare;  be- 
cause, with  the  exception  of  the  nurse  in 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  who  Is  llker  Shakes- 
peare than  any  other  of  his  creations  sav- 
ing myself,  I  am  the  only  really  live  char- 
acter in  all  his  plays.  Falstaff,  Richard, 
Juliet,  lago,  Nym,  yourself,  my  lord,  are 
merely  fairies,  good,  bad,  or  Indifferent. 
Mark  you,  my  lord,  mark  It  well :  I  do  not 
imply  that  Shakespeare  intended  me  for 
himself.  I  am  the  sub-consciousness,  the 
inmost  fibre  of  the  man  —  the  Judas  of 
very  self,  which  every  artist  unbeknown 
creates  for  his  own  betrayal.  This  men 
begin  to  recognise;  and  the  moment  they 
are  fully  aware  of  the  self-deception  of 
their    Hamleto-Shakespearianism    the    em- 


102  THE  MAN  lORlilD 

pire  of  Shakespeare  is  destroyed,  and  the 
world  becomes  once  more  an  empty  nut. 

Ham.  And  you  come  into  your  own 
again,  videlicet,  nonentity. 

Far.  No,  my  lord ;  I  alone  remain,  the 
self-pilloried  monster,  the  Judas-Shak-es- 
peare  who  cozened  the  foolish  world  for 
three  hundred  years. 

Ham.  Were  we  not  spirits,  and 
although  I  should  be  unclean  afterwards 
until  the  evening,  I  would  beat  your  face 
into  a  jelly  with  my  hands. 

Par.  Oh !  my  lord,  we  know  you  can 
unpack  your  heart  like  a  drab,  and  say 
more  than  you  dare  do.  That  I  am  Shakes- 
peare is  made  apparent  to  any  awakened 
intelligence  by  the  fact  that  what  was  sub- 
conscious as  Parolles  becomes  conscious  as 
a  palliated,  a  self-excused  characteristic  of 
Hamlet,  the  mirror,  the  false,  the  magic 
mirror  which  Shakespeare  held  up  to  na- 
ture. But  my  main  proof,  my  impreg- 
nable rock,  is  the  book  of  sonnets.  And 
here,   my   lord,   is   a  new   edition    (I   buy 


TETE-A-TETE  103 

them  all:  it  is  my  book)  a  very  good  one, 
too :  published  by  Mr.  John  Lane,  of  the 
Bodley  Head,  my  lord,  in  the  Albany.  The 
book,  I  am  impelled  to  point  out  by  some 
hidden  power,  connected,  doubtless,  with 
my  recrudescence,  introduces  a  new  illus- 
trator, Mr.  Henry  Ospovat,  a  Muscovite, 
to  the  English  public.  It  was  an  original 
idea  to  illustrate  Shakespeare's  sonnets,  and 
a  very  questionable  one,  I  think ;  hardly  an- 
swered in  the  affirmative  by  Mr.  Ospovat's 
pictures. 

Ham.  Let  me  see  them.  Mr.  Ospovat's 
art  is  of  Rossettian  origin,  I  should  say. 
His  pictures  are  interesting  in  themselves: 
some  of  the  faces  are  unmistakable  types. 
As  comments  on  the  text  they  are  sug- 
gestive ;  there  is  subtlety  in  the  painted 
Deauty  allowing  the  sonnet,  which  has 
caught  fire  at  the  candle  lighting  her  mir- 
ror, to  flare  away  in  smoky  flame  as  she 
reads  it.  I  like  these  illustrations ;  and 
it  may  be  that  It  is  just  such  works  as 
Shakespeare's  sonnets  that  should  be  illus- 


104  THE  MAN  FORBID 

tratcd  ratlici*  than  dramas  and  stories  con- 
taining pictures  in  themselves.  It  is,  how- 
ever, still  a  question  with  me  whether  or 
not  one  art  is  prostituted  in  illustrating 
another. 

Par.  The  old  doubter,  still !  Well,  my 
lord,  these  sonnets  are  the  evidence  in  chief 
for  my  identity  with  Shakespf^re.  In 
them  I  have  written  myself  down  infamous 
in  the  last  degree:  the  hack  and  slave 
of  Southampton  and  Pembroke ;  the  go- 
between  for  courtiers  and  their  mistresses ; 
a  fatuous  fool ;  a  debased  sensualist ;  and  — - 
You  have  broken  my  jaw,  my  lord.  Was 
it  well  done  to  strike  one  who  cannot  strike 
back  by  reason  of  his  inferior  rank?  How 
the  devil  did  I  suddenly  become  embodied ! 
I  thought  we  were  spirits !  Ugh  1  I've 
swallowed  a  tooth ! 

Ham.  You  shall  now  go  to  your  place 
in  limbo  and  read  this  book  from  begin- 
ning to  end,  "  The  Mystery  of  Shakes- 
peare's Sonnets,"  an  attempted  elucidation 
by  Mr.  Cuming  Walters.     It  will  help  you. 


TETE-A-TETE  105 

perhaps,  to  understand  that  Shakespeare 
was  greater  than  either  you  or  I ;  that  you, 
by  many  degrees  inferior  to  the  average 
sensual  man,  are  less  alive  than  almost  any 
other  character  Shakespeare  portrayed, 
lacking,  as  you  do,  both  conscience  and 
imagination.  Beside  you  Pistol  is  beau- 
tiful and  Bardolph  sweet.  What  have  you 
to  do  with  the  faults  of  Shakespeare.? 
Who  is  there  at  all  that  shall  judge  him.'' 
It  is  law  all  the  world  over  that  men  must 
be  judged  by  their  peers.  Where  are 
those  who  may  sit  with  Shakespeare.'* 
Dante,  Goethe,  Hugo,  Ibsen,  are  parochial 
beside  him.  Ciesar,  Charlemagne,  Crom- 
well, Napoleon,  are  of  a  diiFerent  order. 
Read  Mr.  Walters'  book.  He  will  clear 
your  mind  of  the  loathsome  cant  with  which 
some  men  in  the  street  have  befogged 
Shakespeare  for  themselves.  Respect  the 
interesting  elucidation  Mr.  Walters  offers. 
I  believe  there  is  much  truth  in  it.  I  my- 
self am  likest  Shakespeare  of  all  the  beings 
he  made.     Those  tables  on  which  I  scrib- 


106  THE  MAN  FORBID 

bled  against  the  wall  of  Elsinore  that  one 
may  smile  and  smile  and  be  a  villain,  arc 
perhaps,  the  very  tables  on  which  Shakes- 
speare  wrote  his  sonnets.  So  extraordi- 
nary a  being  would  keep  an  extraordinary 
commonplace  book.  His  sonnets  are  mem- 
oranda, written  principally  for  himself, 
and  although  some  of  the  matter  is  repro- 
duced in  the  plays,  the  meaning  of  much 
of  it  can  only  be  guessed  at.  The  persons 
of  the  sonnets  are  the  symbols  of  a  poetic 
shorthand  of  which  the  key  perished  with 
Shakespeare  himself.  Mr.  Walters  makes 
as  fine  a  guess  as  may  be.  But  whether 
you  accept  it  or  not,  never  again  read  into 
the  sonnets  a  loathsome  meaning. 

Par.  Well,  my  lord,  well.  But  I  can 
tell  you  this,  that  Shakespeare's  day  is 
done.     There  is  an  end  of  him. 

Ham.  If  so,  then,  the  end  is  not  to 
come ;  if  it  be  not  to  come  it  will  be  now ; 
if  it  be  not  now  yet  it  will  come :  the  readi- 
ness is  all.  Shakespeare  has  been  ready 
for  the  better  part  of  three  centuries.  I 
question  if  Time  is  ready  yet. 


A  WOULD-BE  LONDONER 


A  WOULD-BE  LONDONER 

SANDRIDGE  came  to  London  too  late 
for  what  he  wished  to  accomphsh. 
His  ambition  was  to  be  a  Londoner.  It 
is  true  the  Londoner  is  made,  not  born  ;  but 
at  the  very  latest  the  process  must  begin 
at  twenty-five.  Sandridge  was  two-and- 
thirty  when  he  left  a  North  of  England 
town,  a  circle  of  interesting  acquaintances 
of  which  he  was  the  centre,  and  a  roomy 
old-fashioned  house  of  his  own,  for  Lon- 
don, solitude,  and  a  modest  apartment  near 
Oxford  Circus. 

In  the  provincial  bosom,  faith,  even  at 
thirty-two,  meditates  metropolitan  mira- 
cles ;  Sandridge  expected  to  have  the  Lon- 
don mountains  removed  by  a  member  of 
Parliament  who  was  his  second-cousin. 

"  Ah,"  said  the  Member ;  "  you  must  be- 
gin to  learn  the  ropes  at  a  club." 

109 


110  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Needing  for  himself  all  the  influence  he 
could  snatch,  he  resented  Sandridge's  un- 
connected state,  and  refused  him  a  single 
bone.  That  is  the  use  of  the  fable  of 
"  knowing  the  ropes  " ;  nobody  believes  in 
it;  but  it  is  very  convenient  to  refer  to 
when  you  are  asked  for  assistance. 

"  It's  a  shame,"  grumbled  the  Member. 
"  A  man's  relatives  ought  to  be  able  to 
help  him  instead  of  requiring  help."  So 
he  put  up  his  cousin  at  an  expensive  new 
club. 

"  Let  him  find  out  the  ropes  there  if  he 
can,"  he  snarled  to  an  acquaintance. 

"  As  well  there  as  anywhere,  when  you 
think  of  it,  though,"  he  continued,  recon- 
sidering. "  Have  you  found  out  the 
ropes.?  Has  anyone  ever  found  out  the 
ropes.?  No;  there's  no  rigging  about  it. 
It's  simply  a  huge  tumbling  coil  of  hemp 
and  iron,  all  tarred  with  the  same  stick ; 
and  you  get  hold  of  a  hawser-end  or  a 
chain-cable,  and  hang  on  or  drop  off." 

In  the  smoking-room   of  the  new  club. 


A  WOULD-BE  LONDONER      111 

Sandridge  made  diffident  remarks  about  the 
young  Disraeli,  the  young  Buhver,  about 
Count  D'Orsay,  about  great  talkers,  about 
personalities  who  had  been  powerful  out- 
side of  politics,  literature,  and  art:  these 
were  the  Londoners  he  had  talked  of  with 
such  confidence  in  the  North.  He  and  his 
friends  had  discussed  their  waistcoats,  their 
eloquence,  their  repartees,  their  influence 
on  fashions  of  dress,  fashions  of  speech, 
fashions  of  thought. 

In  a  month's  time  Sandrldge's  diffidence 
changed  into  taciturnity.  The  younger 
clubmen  chaffed  him,  and  called  him  "  the 
Disraelian  Johnny."  He  withdrew  into 
corners  and  moped  in  anterooms.  One 
afternoon  Lieutenant  Hopeby  of  the  Pur- 
ple Guards  lounged  in  beside  him:  he  was 
a  very  exquisite  giant,  twenty-three  years 
old,  guileless,  as  certain  about  everything 
as  a  child  of  seven,  and  his  forte  was 
patronage ;  he  felt  himself  an  amateur 
Providence,  and  was  always  on  the  look-out 
for  somebody  to  console.     It  was  he,  and 


112  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Sandridge  knew  it,  who  had  struck  out  tlie 
phrase,  "  the  Disraelian  Johnny  " ;  but  it 
was  also  he,  and  he  only,  who  had  given 
any  real  attention  to  Sandridgc's  remarks. 

"  Well,  old  chap,"  began  Hopcby,  in  his 
paternal  way.  "  Let's  have  a  comfortable 
talk.  How  do  you  get  on?  Do  you  find 
yourself  becoming  a  regular  Londoner?  " 

Sandridge  blushed  to  the  roots  of  his 
hair;  but  he  was  quite  powerless.  He 
thought,  writhing  mentally,  how  Disraeli 
would  have  touched  this  youngster  with  a 
point  of  flame  able  to  drill  a  passage  even 
through  his  armour-plating  of  conceit; 
whereas  he  hadn't  a  leaden  dart  to  throw. 

"  I  am  afraid,"  he  stammered,  "  I  am 
too  old.  Art  is  long  and  life  is  short,  you 
know." 

"  But  you  mustn't  say  that,"  replied 
the  Purple  Guard  kindly.  "  Look  at  — 
what's  his  name  ?  —  the  old  Roman  who 
began  to  learn  Greek  on  his  death-bed. 
It's  never  too  late  to  learn,  as  the  penitent 


A  WOULD-BE  LONDONER       113 

thief  said.  But  what's  your  difficulty, 
Sandridge?  " 

"  Nobody  ever  asks  me  anywhere ;  I 
never  have  a  chance  to  — " 

"  To  what?     Come,  old  chap." 

"  Well,"  said  Sandridge,  shifting  un- 
easily in  his  chair,  "  it's  not  like  me  to 
talk  in  this  way  —  ah  —  Hopeby ;  but  I 
seldom  have  a  chance  to  talk  to  anybody 
now.  I'm  awfully  ambitious  " —  he  could 
have  bitten  his  tongue  off  at  every  word. 
"  You've  heard  my  idea  of  the  Londoner, 
his  place  and  power.  My  intention  is  to 
be  a  Londoner  of  that  kind.  I  have  edu- 
cated myself  for  such  a  position  by  the 
study  of  —  by  many  studies;  just  as  one 
is  educated  to  take  orders  —  or  for  the 
army.  But  I  get  no  opportunity  to  —  to 
exercise  my  functions." 

"Hard  on  you  —  eh?  But  I  say,  you 
know,  you're  quite  an  original,  Sandridge. 
It's  a  new  branch;  deportment's  nothing 
to  this.     You  should  have  a  professorship, 


Ill  THE  MAN  FORBID 

my  boy ;  teach  them  to  be  Londoners.  I 
saw  an  article  in  a  paper  the  other  day  — 
*  Wanted,  a  New  Occupation.'  Here  you 
have  it :  '  The  Art  of  Being  a  Londoner, 
in  twenty  lessons.'  You  could  charge 
what  you  like ;  and  you'd  get  it  —  for  a 
time." 

"  But  I'm  demoralised,"  rejoined  Sand- 
ridge,  overlooking  Hopcby's  banter. 
"  Tlie  fellows  here  don't  understand  me." 

Then  he  added  very  slowly,  measuring 
his  words,  that  sometimes  faltered,  and  with 
eyes  that  flickered  between  confidence  and 
timidity :  "  I  take  it  that  I  have  not  yet 
met  a  foeman  worthy  of  my  steel.  At  a 
dinner  of  celebrities  I  believe  I  could  at 
once  make  my  mark." 

The  Purple  Guard  sat  up  and  stared  at 
Sandridge  for  fully  a  minute. 

"  Yes,"  continued  Sandridge,  misunder- 
standing the  other's  silence,  and  feeling,  to 
his  own  surprise,  as  secure  as  a  man  who 
has  led  the  ace  of  trumps  for  the  last 
trick ;  "  yes,  Hopeby,  my  place  is  in  those 


A  WOULD-BE  LONDONER       115 

circles  where  conversation  is  understood. 
Here  every  man  is  full  of  himself  and  his 
own  little  affairs.  They  talk  of  the  club 
cuisine,  of  their  regiment,  of  an  actress, 
or  of  a  billiard-player:  a  thought,  an  epi- 
gram, only  makes  them  raise  their  eye- 
brows. I  feel  among  you  like  an  eagle  in 
a  dovecot." 

The  Purple  Guard  sat  back  and  watched 
Sandridge  through  his  eyelashes. 

"  Conversation  is  like  piano-playing," 
went  on  the  would-be  Londoner,  "  and  is 
not  truly  valued  except  by  virtuosos. 
Most  of  you  fellows,  now,  would  as  soon 
hear  a  piano-organ  as  Paderewski.  I  have 
practised  talking;  we  used  to  practise  it 
for  hours  daily  in  the  North  —  the  genial 
initiative,  the  sudden  digression,  the  calcu- 
lated repartee,  the  retort  in  ambush,  the 
fitted  apologue,  the  grooved  anecdote,  the 
cascade  of  words,  the  slow  sententious 
movement,  the  intolerant  harangue ;  we  had 
an  art  and  practice  of  talk  with  a  termi- 
nology all  our  own.     Yes,  Hopeby,  I  have 


116  THE  JVIAN  FORBID 

it  in  mc  to  make  a  great  name  as  a  con- 
versationalist." 

The  Purple  Guard  sat  up  again.  His 
surprise  was  over.  It  took  this  young  man 
a  very  short  time  to  docket  and  dismiss  any 
revelation  of  character. 

"  You're  one  of  the  queerest  chaps  I  ever 
met,  Sandridge,"  he  said ;  "  and  I'll  tell 
you  what  I'll  do  for  you.  You  know  my 
uncle,  the  Pope  ?  " 

"  Your  uncle,  the  Pope.?  " 

"I  see  you  don't.  Major  Hopeby- 
Bonner,  my  uncle,  is  one  of  the  best  talk- 
ers in  London,  or  has  that  reputation, 
which  is  better.  Somebody  of  consequence 
whom  he  snubbed  called  him  the  Pope,  and 
the,  name  stuck.  Now,  he's  dining  here 
with  me  to-night.  You  come  too,  and  the 
pair  of  you  can  talk  for  a  wager." 

Sandridge  accepted  in  a  faint  voice. 
He  wished  that  it  had  been  anybody  but 
Major  Hopeby-Bonner's  nephew  who  had 
asked  him,  because  he  would  have  preferred 
to    decline    the    invitation.     He    and    his 


A  WOULD-BE  LONDONER       117 

friends  had  discussed  the  Major:  his  novels, 
poems  and  essays  had  all  been  declared  in- 
ferior, the  work  of  a  callow  amateur. 
Rumours  of  his  gifts  as  a  talker  had  also 
reached  the  North,  and  it  had  been  decided 
that  he  was  a  mere  farceur,  on  a  level  with 
the  jester  of  antiquity.  Sandridge  had 
imagined  himself  brushing  off  like  flies  such 
people  as  Major  Hopeby-Bonner;  to  be 
asked  to  meet  him  as  a  man  of  the  first 
importance  blew  the  foundation-stone  out 
of  his  aerial  castle.  But  he  quickly  built 
another  one*;  told  himself  it  would  be  prac- 
tice: went  to  his  room,  drank  tea,  and 
dipped  into  Lives  of  Carlyle,  Beaconsfield, 
Macaulay,  and  Houghton  till  dinner-time. 

The  Purple  Guard  introduced  Sandridge 
to  his  uncle  as  "  a  talking  chap,  too." 
Sandridge,  perspiring,  wondered  what  Car- 
lyle would  have  done  in  such  a  circum- 
stance. 

Major  Hopeby-Bonner,  like  most  gar- 
rulous people,  was  a  reticent,  bashful  man, 
who   plunged   into   speech   because   silence 


118  THE  MAN  FORBID 

was  accompanied  with  the  discomfort  of 
greater  self-consciousness. 

"Talk,"  said  the  Major,  "is  diluted 
silence.  I  confess  I  could  never  carry 
more  than  a  thimbleful  of  neat  silence  in 
an  evening." 

"  The  idea,"  rejoined  Sandridge,  very 
white,  and  in  an  unsteady  voice,  but  wish- 
ing to  say  something  strong  at  once, 
"  is  —  ah  —  hardly  —  is  not  —  quite  —  It 
might  have  been  phrased  differently."  He 
was  thinking  that  Beaconsfield  would  never 
have  said  anything  so  vulgar. 

"  It  might,"  assented  the  Major,  much 
amused.      "  How  would  you  phrase  it.^  " 

"  Well,  I  would  have  said,"  stammered 
Sandridge,  "  that  —  you  remember,  Car- 
lyle  — .  Really  I  think  there  is  nothing  to 
beat  the  proverb  '  Silence  is  golden.'  " 

"  A  good  proverb.  But  what  is  the  con- 
nection ?  " 

"  The  connection.''  —  Eh  —  we  were 
talking  of  silence.     At  least  I  think  so." 

The  Major  smiled  and  went  on  with  his 


A  WOULD-BE  LONDONER       119 

soup,  and  the  Pui'ple  Guard  said  half  aside 
to  Sandridge :  "  Bravo  !  that  must  be  '  the 
retort  in  ambush' — eh?  You've  floored 
him ;  he  hasn't  a  word  to  say,  you  see." 
He  added,  "  What  do  you  think  of  London, 
Sandridge?  " 

"  It's  —  very  big,"  stammered  Sand- 
ridge, "  and  enormous  crowds,  and  buses, 
and  —  I  understand  the  fogs  are  dread- 
ful." He  had  no  idea  of  what  he  was 
saying:  he  was  going  over  in  his  mind  the 
sentences  that  had  passed  between  himself 
and  the  Major,  trying  to  improve,  or  ex- 
plain away,  his  own  ineptitude. 

"  Ah  ! '  the  slow  sententious  movement,'  " 
murmured  the  Purple  Guard. 

"  I  have  been  in  London  half  my  life," 
said  the  Maj  or ;  "  and  yet  the  mere  speak- 
ing of  the  word  '  London,'  the  overhearing 
it  said  casually,  often  thrills  me  with  a  sense 
of  terror,  and  wonder,  and  delight." 

"  Mesopotamia,"  trolled  the  Purple 
Guard. 

Sandridge,   still  several  remarks  behind 


120  THE  MAN  FORBID 

time,  struck  in:  "  The  connection,  Major 
Hopcbj-Bonncr,  between  what  you  said 
about  silence  and  what  I  said  is  perhaps 
at  first  sight  not  very  evident ;  but  — " 
There  he  paused,  and  for  the  hfe  of  him 
could  not  resume  his  sentence. 

"  We're  waiting  for  '  the  sudden  digres- 
sion,' "  said  the  Guardsman ;  and  the  Major 
smiled  encouragingly.  But  it  was  all  over 
with  Sandridge;  he  w'ent  hot  and  cold, 
turned  ghastly  pale,  pleaded  illness,  and 
withdrew. 

That  was  his  last  appearance  in  a  club 
or  any  haunt  of  men  for  a  long  time.  He 
ceased  all  correspondence  with  his  old 
friends ;  he  hid  away  his  biographies  and 
books  of  table-talk ;  took  all  his  food  in 
his  own  room ;  walked  about  the  streets  at 
night  muttering  to  himself ;  grew  grey  and 
bent ;  and  was  watched  by  the  police.  One 
autumn  evening,  feeling  that  actual  mad- 
ness beset  him  in  his  solitude,  he  slipped 
into  the  Cafe  Cosmopolite.  The  band  had 
just   ceased   playing   a    selection    from   II 


A  WOULD-BE  LONDONER      121 

Trovatore  as  he  entered  the  dining-room, 
and  the  crowd  was  somewhat  subdued. 
Many  noticed  Sandridge,  and  were  moved 
by  his  appearance.  His  furtive  hfe  had 
given  him  a  stealthy,  ghding  motion.  His 
grizzled  hair,  which  he  wore  long,  had 
gone  off  his  forehead,  and  showed  a  high 
brow ;  his  beard  was  also  long  and  wizard- 
like. His  slender,  stooping  figure,  pale 
face,  and  deep-set,  haunted  eyes  interested 
some  spectators,  and  made  others  uneasy. 
He  felt  the  impression  he  created,  and  was 
gratified.  Next  night  he  returned,  and 
soon  formed  a  habit  of  dining  at  the  Cafe 
Cosmopolite  every  evening.  He  enters,  a 
cold,  self-centred  figure,  with  wolfish,  wan- 
dering eyes,  like  those  of  one  who  had  been 
racked;  and  glides  to  his  chosen  seat. 
Women  catch  their  breath  as  he  passes,  and 
all  who  see  him  for  the  first  time  ask  who 
he  is.  Some  think  him  like  a  picture  of 
Christ ;  others,  like  Mephistopheles,  The 
waiters  know  nothing  of  him ;  but  tell  coun- 
try visitors   that  he   is   this,   that,   or  the 


122  THE  MAN  FORBID 

other  celebrity,  according  to  fancy.  He 
must  be  served  in  silence ;  points  out  on  the 
card  and  on  the  wine-list  what  he  requires, 
and  eats  ravenously.  He  is  never  heard  to 
utter  a  word  except  "  Go  away !  "  if,  as 
sometimes  happens,  a  waiter  forgets  and 
addresses  him. 

He  is  the  type  of  failure,  and  a  legend 
begins  to  grow  round  him.  His  ambition 
was  paltry,  but  he  pursued  it  highly.  De- 
feated in  his  effort  to  be  first,  he  refused 
any  other  place ;  and  it  is  this  element  of 
greatness  in  his  character  which  makes  him 
now  so  impressive  an  apparition  in  the  Cafe 
Cosmopolite. 


THE  ART  OF  POETRY 


THE  ART  OF  POETRY 

LIBERTY  of  utterance,  spontaneity, 
is  the  mark  of  the  higliest  poetry. 
To  be  spontaneous  is  the  whole  art  of 
poetry,  and  especially  distinguishes  it  from 
the  artifice  of  poetry.  It  is  therefore  the 
main  object  of  artifice  to  appear  sponta- 
neous. The  master-artificer  of  our  time, 
more  skilled  than  Pope,  accomplished  be- 
yond praise,  never  attained  greater  liberty 
of  utterance  than  in  the  serenade  in 
Maud:  — 

She  is  coming,  my  own,  my  sweet; 

Were  it  ever  so  airy  a  tread. 
My  heart  would  hear  her  and  beat 

Were  it  earth  in  an  earthy  bed; 
My  dust  would  hear  her  and  beat 

Had  I  lain  for  a  century  dead ; 
Would  start  and  tremble  under  her  feet, 

And  blossom  in  purple  and  red. 
125 


126  THE  MAN  FORBID 

The  master-artist  of  all  time  was  never 
more  at  ease  than  in  the  overture  to  Twelfth 
Night:  — 

O  spirit  of  love,  how  quick  and  fresli  art 

thou  ] 
That,  notwithstanding  thy  capacity 
Receiveth  as  the  sea,  nauglit  enters  there. 
Of  what  validity  and  pitch  soe'er. 
But  falls  into  ahatement  and  low  price. 
Even  in  a  minute!     So  full  of  shapes  is 

fancy. 
That  it  alone  is  high-fantastical. 

There  is  no  prompt  effect  in  the  blank 
verse  to  equal  the  quadruple  knock  of  the 
artificer's  rhyme;  Shakespeare's  careless 
fault,  the  rhyme  "  there  " —  "  soe'er,"  is 
worse  than  Tennyson's  repeated  subjunc- 
tive "  were  it  " ;  but  nothing  in  the  blank 
verse  requires  such  a  resolute  countenance 
or  puts  so  much  constraint  on  the  imagina- 
tion as  Tennyson's  conclusion,  "  purple 
and  red."  It  appears,  then,  that  the  care- 
lessness of  the  artist  is  unconsciously  simu- 
lated by  the  artificer,  the  exigent  form  the 


THE  ART  OF  POETRY  127 

instinct  of  the  latter  selects  entailing  dif- 
ficulties that  make  faults.  Poetry  is  the 
most  empirical  of  all  the  arts ;  in  a  sense 
every  poet  is  a  charlatan ;  he  can  give  no 
authority  except  his  own  experience,  his 
own  imagination ;  in  the  last  resort  he  can 
give  no  authority  at  all ;  he  cannot  tell :  it 
was  the  Muse.  Whether  he  be  artificer  or 
artist,  and  the  true  poet  is  always  both,  it 
is  liberty  of  utterance  he  seeks.  Poetry  is 
the  least  artificial  of  all  the  arts ;  it  is  at 
its  best  when  it  is  most  archaic.  This  is 
not  a  matter  of  obsolete  words ;  rather  it 
is  an  eschewing  of  libraries,  a  getting  back 
to  the  earth  divested,  saving  the  harp  and 
sword,  of  all  the  inventions  of  man's  hands 
and  mind.  Thus  the  freest  utterance  is 
always  to  be  found  in  the  narrative  or  the 
drama.  Subconsciousness,  which  the  poet 
singing  in  his  own  character  inevitably  ob- 
scures —  that  is  to  say,  the  eternal,  the 
voice  of  the  species  —  becomes  audible  in 
personation.  The  Elizabethan-Jacobean 
age,  the  great  period  of  the  drama,  is  also 


128  THE  MAN  FORBID 

the  great  period  of  poetry,  when  every  aid 
to  free  and  full  utterance  was  employed  in 
the  disdain  of  art.  It  was  in  The  Spaiiish 
Tragedy  that  Kyd  revealed  the  new  and 
excellent  way  of  the  madman.  Here  was 
liberty  at  last;  everything  could  be  said; 
and  the  kernel  of  the  world  appear  through 
the  rent  in  the  heart,  the  crack  in  the  mind. 
Hieronimo  announces  the  woe  of  the  awak- 
ened intelligence  trembling  on  the  verge  of 
madness  in  three  lines,  three  crude  lines  that 
are  not  surpassed  by  any  piercing  utter- 
ance of  Hamlet,  Timon,  or  Lear :  — 

This  toils  my  body,  tliis  consiimeth  age. 
That  only  I  to  all  men  just  must  be. 
And  neither  gods  nor  men  be  just  to  me. 

It  is  a  cry  wrung  from  the  inmost  heart. 
These  words  do  not  occur  in  the  additional 
matter;  they  are  Kyd's,  and  they  are  the 
cognisance  of  Ehzabethan  tragedy. 

In  his  quaint,  erudite,  and  most  readable 
preface  (to  the  Temple  edition).  Professor 
Schick  says  of  the  play  itself :     "  It  is  like 


THE  ART  OF  POETRY  129 

an  enchanted  garden,  where  Hfeless  wooden 
puppets  seem  to  wait  for  the  magician  who 
is  to  wake  them  into  hfe.  We  know  that 
the  magician  did  come,  and  of  old  Jeronimo 
he  made  Hamlet  and  Lear,  out  of  Horatio 
and  Bcllimperia  he  made  the  loveliest  of  all 
wooing-scenes  in  Rovieo  and  Juliet,  of  the 
play  within  the  play  he  made  the  most 
subtle  awakener  of  conscience." 
Kyd's  fate  has  been  that  of  most  pio- 
neers. The  crops  of  others  wave  on  the 
land  he  cleared.  But  it  would  be  easy  to 
revive  and  perpetuate  his  memory.  The 
Spanish  Tragedy  was  so  seminal  in  its  own 
time,  and,  above  all,  was  so  influential  in 
determining  the  character  of  some  of 
Shakespeare's  greatest  work,  that  its  regu- 
lar publication  as  an  appendix  in  popular 
editions  of  Shakespeare  would  be  much 
more  to  the  purpose  than  the  inclusion  of 
Edward  III.,  for  example.  Meantime,  we 
have  Mr.  Dent's  admirable  "  Temple  Edi- 
tion," which  I  hope  avIII  be  widely  read. 
Professor  Schick's  "  wooden  puppets  "  is 


130  THE  MAN  FORBID 

extreme.  Hieronimo,  although  only  the 
outline  of  a  character,  is  made  by  Kyd  the 
mouthpiece  of  his  own  actual  woe,  and  the 
"  Painter's  part,"  the  interpolation  whose 
fame  eclipsed  that  of  the  play  itself,  and 
which  might  have  been  hurriedly  written 
by  Shakespeare,  will  arrest  and  hold  the 
most  careless  reader. 


THOUGHTS  ON  IRONY 


THOUGHTS  ON  IRONY 


BEHIND  phenomena  I  have  found  an 
inexorable  irony.  Phenomena  them- 
selves are  often  beautiful ;  but  perhaps  they 
are  only  accidentally  connected  with  spirit- 
ual truth,  skin-deep,  the  complexion  of  this 
irony.  I  may  ultimately  find  that  irony 
includes  beauty,  and  is  greater  than  beauty. 
If  poetry,  aided  by  science,  should  find  that 
truth  is  ugly,  poetry  will  say  so ;  but,  as 
nothing  is  ugly  to  science,  perhaps  poetry 
may  learn  a  lesson. 


Worshipful  Irony,  the  profound  "  Irony 
of  fate,"  is  doubtless  responsible  for  Ren- 
anism,  and  all  'isms,  but  is  derived  from 
none  of  them. 

133 


134  THE  MAN  FORBID 

It  is  centric,  the  adamantine  axis  of  the 
universe.  At  its  poles  are  the  illusions  we 
call  matter  and  spirit,  day  and  night,  pleas- 
ure and  pain,  beauty  and  ugliness.  By  it 
our  enterprises  are  whirled  away  from  our 
most  resolved  intentions.  A  playwright, 
wearing  out  his  life  in  the  abortive  effort 
to  found  a  county  family,  makes  the  litera- 
ture of  the  world  Shakespearian  centuries 
after  his  death ;  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  colo- 
nise America  in  the  name  of  the  Highest  — 
that  Tammany  may  flourish  in  New  York ; 
and  out  of  the  beautiful  Shakespearianism 
may  come  evil ;  out  of  Tammany,  good. 

Irony  is  the  enigma  within  the  enigma, 
the  open  secret,  the  only  answer  vouchsafed 
the  eternal  riddle. 

m 

I  am  not  a  Mocker ;  Mockery  and  Irony 
are  not  synonyms,  as  I  understand  them. 
It  is  true  I  called  love  "  a  mere  broker  for 
posterity;"  but  the  image  is  homely, 
illuminative,    and    without    disdain.     The 


THOUGHTS  ON  IRONY  135 

advent  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  was  once 
likened  to  the  approach  of  a  thief  in  the 
night. 

Mj  concern  is  not  exclusively  with  "  the 
best,  the  noblest,  and  the  happiest  of  men," 
but  with  the  universe  as  I  can  grasp  it. 
Irony  is  not  a  creed.  The  makers  of  creeds 
have  always  miscalled,  denied  some  part  of 
the  world.  Irony  affirms  and  delights  in 
the  whole.  Consciously,  it  is  the  deep 
complacence  which  contemplates  with  un- 
allo^'ed  satisfaction  Love  and  Hate,  the 
tiger  and  the  nightingale,  the  horse  and 
the  blow-fly,  Messalina  and  Galahad,  the 
village  natural  and  Napoleon.  Uncon- 
sciously, it  is  the  soul  of  the  Universe. 
Steep  Irony  in  Chaos,  and  the  universe  will 
string  itself  about  it  like  crystals  on  a 
thread.  Whence  comes  Chaos.?  Whence 
comes  Irony.?  There  is  no  reply.  To  be- 
lieve that  the  universe  was  made  is  the 
essence  of  anthropomoi^hism.  I  would 
have  no  more  interest  in  a  made  universe 
than  in  an  eight-day  clock  or  a  suburban 


136  THE  MAN   l-'OllBID 

villa.  Thought  cannot  conceive,  nor  fancy 
call  by  any  name,  the  manner  and  agency 
of  the  becoming  of  the  universe.  But  I 
perceive  the  universe  as  a  golden  bough  of 
Irony,  flowering  with  suns  and  systems. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  ODES 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  ODES 

IT  is  as  easy  to  find  fault  with  the  man- 
ner of  Mr.  Meredith's  poetry  as  with 
the  manner  of  Sliakespeare's,  or  with  that 
of  any  authentic  writer,  and  there  are  those 
who  hasten  to  do  so.  Mr.  Meredith  has 
of  course  ahvays  enjoyed  the  approbation 
of  his  peers  and  the  reverential  suffrage  of 
his  younger  contemporaries,  but  the  class 
which  is  attracted  by  the  literariness 
of  literature,  second-hand  minds  whose 
thoughts  are  echoes,  who  have  memory 
without  judgment,  and  who,  when  they 
themselves  attempt  literature,  "  draw  from 
a  model,"  are  now,  and  have  been  for  long, 
so  loud  in  the  daily  and  weekly  press,  that 
a  great  poet  like  Mr.  Meredith  cannot  find 
in  contemporary  criticism  the  mirror  the 
poet  needs,  and  is  compelled,  in  his  own 

139 


140  THE  MAN  l-ORBID 

words,  "  to  look  elsewhere."  Censorship 
is  that  function  of  criticism  which  medi- 
ocrity most  affects.  By  finding  fault  it  en- 
deavours after  a  feeling  of  equality  with 
that  which  is  above  it,  unaware  that  admi- 
ration is  the  only  and,  happily,  the  gen- 
.erous  means  by  which  the  lesser  nature 
can  reach  the  level  of  the  greater. 

I  see  a  pitman,  somewhat  ragged  as  to 
his  attire,  who  has  laboured  all  day  under- 
ground, trudging  home  and  humming  a 
tune  by  the  way.  A'  snob,  on  horseback 
perhaps,  or  in  a  brougham,  on  a  bike,  or 
on  foot  and  ragged  too,  looks  after  him 
and  cries  out,  "  I  say,  my  man !  Look 
here !  There's  a  hole  in  your  coat ! " 
That  represents  much  of  the  criticism  of 
the  day  —  contemptible  in  quality,  impor- 
tant by  its  prodigious  volume.  The  writ- 
ers of  it  are  unable  to  connect  criticism 
with  understanding.  Not  to  understand, 
but  to  stand  over  what  is  offered  and  in- 
sult grossly,  seems  to  them  in  all  good 
faith    the    natural    thing   to    do.     Decent 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  ODES      1^1 

honest  people,  whose  vision  is  a  cul-de-sac 
ending   in   a   blank   wall,   and  with   whom 
detraction  is  a  merit,  have  doubtless  always 
existed   in   large   numbers,   have   muttered 
their  comments  upon  occasion,  and  served 
the   purpose   of  the  ages   in   some   occult 
but   necessary   manner.     "  Now,"   a  vehe- 
ment writer  says,   "a  free   press  has   en- 
dowed   ineptitude   and    dulness   with   most 
unnecessary    power   and   prominence,    and 
made  of  them  an   actual  portent.      They 
are  everywhere;  they  creep  into  the  best 
periodicals ;  no  editor  can  cope  with  them. 
At  one  time  the  ranks  of  the  enemies  of 
literature  were  recruited  from  its  own  out- 
casts, poets  and  novelists  of  ambition  who 
had  failed;  but  the  native  black  rat  has 
been  eaten  out  or  hunted  into  the  lowest 
sewers  by  the  hordes   of  vigorous  brown 
rats,    writers,    namely,    more    or   less    suc- 
cessful, to  whom  hterature  is  only  a  trade, 
and  writers  whose  reviewing  is  their  only 
connection    with   literature.     To   have    an 
opinion,  or  to  profess  an  opinion  and  be 


142  THE  MAN  FORBID 

able  to  state  it,  is  all  the  qualification  re- 
quired —  the  vast  increase  in  the  space 
devoted  to  books  in  the  periodical  press 
provides  the  opportunity.  I  suppose  there 
is  no  one  who  can  put  two  sentences  to- 
gether who  has  not  written  a  review  and 
been  paid  for  it.  There  are  shillings, 
guineas  to  be  had,  weekly,  monthly  — 
pin-money,  pocket-money.  The  result  is 
that  the  word  '  literature '  has  become 
nauseous  in  tlie  ears  of  the  world;  that  an 
authentic  manner  is  considered  affectation, 
and  whatever  cannot  be  read  at  break-neck 
speed  is  passed  over  as  obscure."  There 
is  probably  much  truth  in  the  remarks  of 
this  vigorous  writer.  Certain  it  is  that, 
whereas  music,  art  and  the  drama  are  more 
or  less  handsomely  served  by  responsible 
critics,  poetry  and  fiction  remain  pretty 
much  the  prey  of  anonymity. 

"  Mr.  Meredith  is  a  poet :  we  admit  that 
this  man  is  a  poet;  but  what  is  he  doing.'' 
Why,  he  is  making  poetry !  The  man  is 
actually  singing  !     We  can't  stand  that !  " 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  ODES       143 

Hero  3'Ou  have  the  essential  objection 
taken  to  all  true  poetry,  to  all  true  things. 
If  you  can  seem  to  be  busy  about  a  matter, 
like  a  bishop,  for  example,  or  a  high  priest, 
you  are  applauded  of  all  men ;  but  if  you 
are  actually  doing  it,  like  the  tinker  of 
Bedford  or  the  Wayfarer  of  Galilee,  you 
are  not  by  any  means  applauded  of  all 
men.  Or  the  cry  may  be,  "  Yes,  Mr.  Mer- 
edith is  a  poet ;  but  his  principal  work  is 
in  fiction :  he  is  only  a  minor  poet."  This 
is  the  unconscious  jealousy  of  men  which 
cannot  tolerate  that  one  person  should 
have  two  reputations.  And  as  for  his  be- 
ing a  minor  poet,  why,  all  contemporary 
poetry  is  minor  poetry.  Not  until  it  has 
been  loaded  with  the  thought  and  emotion 
of  generations  of  readers  can  poetry  be 
said  to  be  of  age.  It  is  the  centuries  that 
give  poetry  its  majority. 

I  now  wish  to  illustrate,  as  far  as  can 
be  done  by  extracts,  the  power  and  splen- 
dour of  Mr.  Meredith's  "  Odes  in  Contribu- 
tion   to    the    Song    of    French    History." 


144  THE  MAN  FORBID 

From  the  third  ode  I  make  no  quotation, 
as  it  is  a  reprint.  In  the  first,  "  The 
Revolution,"  is  the  following  description 
of  France  risen  against  tyrants, — 

"  War's  ragged  pupils ;  many  a  wavering  line, 
Torn  from  the  dear  fat  soil  of  champaigns 

hopefully  tilled, 
Torn    from   the   motherly   bowl,   the   homely 

spoon. 
To  jest  at  famine,  ply 

The  novel  scythe,  and  stand  to  it  on  the  field ; 
Lie  in  the  furrows,  rain-clouds  for  their  tents ; 
Fronting  the  red  artillery  straighten  spine; 
Buckle  the  shiver  at  sight  of  comrades  strewn ; 
Over    an    empty    platter    affect    the    merrily 

filled; 
Die,  if  the  multiple  hazards  around  said  die; 
Downward  measure  a  foeman  mightily  sized; 
Laugh  at  the  legs  that  would  run  for  a  life 

despised; 
Lyrical  on  into  death's  red-roaring  jaw-gape, 

steeled 
Gaily  to  take  of  the  foe  his  lesson,  and  give 

reply. 
Cheerful   apprentices,  they  shall  be  masters 

soon  ! 


(( 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  ODES      145 

This  of  France  mated  with  Napoleon, 
the  man-miracle,"  "  earth's  chosen, 
crowned,  unchallengeable  upstart,"  "  the 
arbiter  of  circumstance,"  is  from  tlie  sec- 
ond ode, — 

"  Nor  ever  had  heroical  Romance,  ^ 

Never     ensanguined     History's     lengthened' 

scroll 
Shown  fulminant  to  shoot  the  leven-dart 
Terrific  as  this  man,  by  whom  upraised. 
Aggrandised  and  begemmed  she  outstripped 

her  peers; 
Like  midnight's  levying  brazier-beacon  blazed 
Defiant  to  the  world,  a  rally  for  her  sons ; 
Day  of  the  darkness;  this   man's  mate;  by 

him. 
Cannon  his  name. 

Rescued  from  vivisectionist  and  knave. 
Her  body's  dominators  and  her  shame; 
By    him    with    rivers    of    ranked    battalions, 

brave 
Past  mortal  girt:  a  march  of  swords  and  guns 
Incessant;  his  proved  warriors;  loaded  dice 
He  flung  on  the  crested  board,  where  chilly 

Fears 


146  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Behold   the    Reaper's   ground,    Death  sitting 

grim, 
Awatch  for  his  predestined  ones 
Mid  shrieks  and  torrent-hooves;  but  these, 
Inebriate  of  his  inevitable  device. 
Hail  it  their  hero's  wood  of  lustrous  laurel- 
trees 
Blossom  and  print  of  fresh  Hesperides, 
The  boiling  life-blood  in  their  cheers." 

In  the  last  ode,  "  Alsace  Lorraine,"  Mr. 
George  Meredith,  the  foremost  man  of  let- 
ters in  England,  utters  a  high  and  nol)lc 
message  to  France  and  to  all  men,  the  old 
message  of  renunciation  with  a  new  brav- 
ery in  it :  — 

"  As    light    enkindles    light    when    heavenly 

earthly  mates, 
The  flame  of  pure  immits  the  flame  of  pure. 
Magnanimous  magnanimous  creates. 
So  to  majestic  beauty  stricken  rears 
Hard-visaged  rock  against  the  risen  glow; 
And  men  are  in  the  secret  with  the  spheres. 
Whose  glory  is  celestially  to  bestow. 
Now  nation  looks  to  nation,  that  may  live 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  ODES      147 

Their   common    nurselings   like    the   torrent's 

flower, 
Shaken  by  foul  Destruction's  fast-piled  heap. 
On  France  is  laid  the  proud  initiative 
Of  sacrifice  in  one  self-mastering  hour. 
Whereby  more  than  her  lost  one  will  she  reap ; 
Perchance  the  very  lost  again  regain, 
To  count  it  less  than  her  superb  reward. 
Our  Europe,  where  is  debtor  each  to  each. 
Pass  measure  of  excess,  and  war  is  Cain, 
Fraternal  from  the  Seaman's  beach, 
From  answering  Rhine  in  grand  accord. 
From  Neva  beneath  Northern  cloud. 
And  from  our  Transatlantic  Europe  loud, 
Will  hail  the  rare  example  for  their  theme ; 
Give  response,  as  rich  foliage  to  the  breeze; 
In  their  intrusted  nurseling  know  them  one; 
Like  a  brave  vessel  under  press  of  steam, 
Abreast  the  winds  and  tides,  on  angry  seas, 
Plucked  by  the   heavens   forlorn  of  present 

sun. 
Will  drive  through  darkness,  and,  with  faith 

supreme. 
Have  sight  of  haven  and  the  crowded  quays." 

Mr.   Meredith's   "  Odes   in   Contribution 


118  THE  MAN  FORBID 

« 

to  the  Song  of  French  History,"  is,  in 
some  respects,  the  most  important  book 
that  has  been  given  to  the  world  for  many 
years.  It  offers  the  heart  of  England  to 
the  heart  of  France ;  it  takes  a  proud  step 
forward  in  the  intemationalisation  of  litera- 
ture ;  and  it  contains  the  first  profound 
notes  of  the  new  epic  —  the  epic  of 
Democracy  with  Napoleon  for  hero. 


EA'OLUTION    IN   LITERATURE 


EVOLUTION  IN  LITERATURE 

THE  evolutionary  idea  is  a  misleading 
one  in  literature  even  more  than  in 
science  and  philosophy.  Since  the  Ptole- 
maic system,  nothing  more  satisfactory 
to  common  sense  has  been  offered  in  any 
branch  of  knowledge  than  evolution ;  but 
it  is  now  supposed  that  the  sun  does  not 
go  round  the  earth,  and  it  may  very  well 
be  that  the  apparent  descent  of  man  is  a 
sense-illusion  also.  It  is  known  that  oak 
trees  do  not  grow  from  pine-cones, 
although  an  oak  and  a  pine  may  stand 
side  by  side.  It  is  known  that  monkeys 
never  beget  men  although  they  frequent 
the  same  regions.  Because  Victorian  lit- 
erature succeeds  Georgian  literature,  and, 
at  an  interval,  that  of  the  first  James, 
this    epoch    of    letters    is    not    necessarily 

151 


152  THE  MAN  FORBID 

related  to  those  as  child  and  grcat-great- 
great-grandchild.  I  suggest  that  Knglish 
literature  is  a  forest  rather  than  a  planta- 
tion; a  land  of  upheavals  and  disarranged 
strata  that  science  can  make  little  of  yet, 
at  least ;  and  a  place  of  meteorites  of  which 
the  earth  can  tell  nothing.  I  suggest  that 
evolution,  reversing  the  proverb,  cannot 
see  the  trees  for  the  wood;  and  that  gen- 
eralisation, most  helpful  in  dealing  with 
classes,  is  mischievous  applied  to  individ- 
uals. I  suggest  that  intelligence  —  poet, 
thinker,  sinner,  authentic  person,  or  what- 
ever the  fortunate-unfortunate  may  be 
called  —  will  accept  no  creed ;  that 
although  evolution  is  bound  to  rule  the 
minds  of  men  for  hundreds  of  years  to 
come,  intelligence  knows  it  will  be  dis- 
missed, as  the  idea  of  creation  is  being  dis- 
missed now  ;  and  that  intelligence,  although 
compelled  sometimes  to  use  the  evolution- 
ary idea  in  order  to  be  comprehended  by 
contemporaries,  is  unfettered  by  that  idea. 


TETE-l-T]gTE 


TETE-\-TfiTE 

James  Boswell.  Dr.  JoJm,son. 

JAMES  BOSWELL.     How,  sir,  would 
you   define   Poetry? 

Dr.  Johnson.  Poetry  is  the  entertain- 
ment of  the  imagination  by  aesthetic  inven- 
tions in  language. 

J.  B.  Does  that  definition  not  apply  as 
well  to  prose? 

Dr.  J.  It  does  in  a  limited  measure ; 
but  poetry,  alone  in  verbal  art,  excites  the 
imagination  to  the  highest  pitch  and  sat- 
isfies the  aesthetic  desire  it  arouses. 

J.  B.  Is  it  possible  to  state  how  poetry 
does  this? 

Dr.  J.  Yes,  sir.  The  restraint  upon 
prose  is  one  of  common  sense;  whereas 
the  restraint  upon  poetry  is  that  of 
rhythm. 

155 


156  THE  MAN   FORBID 

J.  B.     llhyme,  sir? 

Dr.  J.  You  talk  like  a  fool,  sir. 
Rhyme  is  not  essential  to  poetry.  It  is 
the  restraint  of  rhythm  which  is  the  source 
of  the  pleasure  poetry  gives.  The  differ- 
ence between  prose  and  poetry  is  the  dif- 
ference between  walking  and  dancing. 
The  former  is  an  exercise,  or  a  means  of 
transit  from  one  point  to  another;  and 
having  got  into  the  way  the  walker  has 
nothing  to  do  but  follow  his  nose  at  what- 
ever pace  and  length  of  stride  he  chooses 
or  utility  requires.  The  latter,  as  it 
happens,  exercises  the  dancer ;  but  the  pur- 
pose of  the  dancer  is  to  take  and  give 
delight,  and  in  all  his  gyrations,  sallies, 
twists  and  turns,  poses,  steps  and  pirou- 
ettes, he  is  obedient  to  the  strictest  law 
of  rhythm. 

J.  B.  But,  sir,  Kemp,  the  Elizabethan 
actor,  danced  all  the  way  from  London  to 
Norwich,  which  was  surely  a  transit  from 
one  point  to  another. 

Dr.  J.     Sir,  your  illustration  is  imper- 


TETE-A-TETE  157 

tinent.  It  was  the  Morris  that  Kemp 
danced,  with  bells  at  his  ankles;  in  itself 
a  comic  performance  related  to  dancing, 
as  Hood's  punning  ballads  are  related  to 
poetry;  and,  as  Kemp  reiterated  and  pro- 
longed it  in  his  notorious  itinerary,  a  per- 
version of  function  more  ridiculous  than 
it  would  be  to  reprint  "  Faithless  Nelly 
Gray  "  over  and  over  in  a  score  of  vol- 
umes of  the  bulk  of  the  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica. 

J.  B.  Two  anachronisms,  sir!  You 
live  long  before  the  Encyclopasdia  Britan- 
nica and  Thomas  Hood. 

Dr.  J.  They  are  nothing,  sir,  to  the 
anachronisms  I  expect  to  commit  in  the 
course    of   this    conversation. 

J.  B.  To  resume,  sir.  Rhythm  is  not 
confined  to  poetry.  Let  me  quote  a 
passage  from  Sir  Thomas  Browne :  — 

Pyramids,  arches,  obelisks,  were  but  the 
irregularities  of  vain-glory,  and  wild  enormi- 
ties of  ancient  magnanimity.  But  the  most 
magnanimous  resolution  rests  in  tlie  Christian 


158  THE  MAN  FORBID 

religion,  which  tramplctli  upon  pride,  and 
sits  on  the  neck  of  ambition,  liumbly  pur- 
suing that  infallible  perpetuity  into  which 
all  others  must  diminish  their  diameters,  and 
be  poorly  seen  in  angles  of  contingency. 

Dr.  J.  The  passage  takes  me  between 
wind  and  water,  both  by  reason  of  its 
meaning  and  the  stateliness  of  it.  I  did 
not,  however,  set  out  to  deny  that  there 
are  rhythmic  sentences  in  prose.  And 
I  grant  also  that  a  queenly  walk,  a  lofty 
carriage,  are  more  to  be  admired  than 
ordinary  dancing.  What  I  maintain  is 
that  the  rhythm  of  poetry,  being,  unlike 
that  of  prose,  fettered  by  metre,  delivers 
poetry  from  the  law  of  common  sense,  as 
a  prisoner  is  delivered  from  the  ordinary 
responsibilities  of  life.  To  be  a  prisoner 
is  itself,  both  for  the  observer  and  the 
sufferer,  a  more  interesting,  a  more  ab- 
sorbing, condition  than  to  be  free.  Every 
spontaneous  action  and  word  of  a  pris- 
oner assume  extraordinary  significance; 
and  the  expression  or  concealment  of  his 


TETE-A-TETE  159 

emotions,  his  very  nonsense  and  grimaces, 
obtain  a  value  of  which  freedom  knows 
nothing.  The  dancer  and  the  poet  are 
prisoners,  and  as  long  as  they  move,  yield- 
ing to  their  impulses  and  exerting  their 
energies  in  their  chosen  or  imposed  fet- 
ters, they  arrest  and  hold  the  attention, 
and,  in  proportion  to  the  beauty  and  pas- 
sion of  the  art  displayed,  entertain  and 
satisfy  the  imagination  of  the  spectator, 
of  the  listener  or  competent  reader. 

J.  B.  I  am  astonished,  sir,  to  hear  you 
maintain  that  poetry  is  above  common 
sense. 

Dr.  J.  It  is  so,  nevertheless.  Attempt 
to  translate  Mercutio's  Queen  Mab  speech 
into  prose,  and  see  what  you  will  make  of 
it.  Or  take  a  serious  passage  —  Othello's 
famous  image  — 

Like  to  the  Pontick  sea, 
Whose  icy  current  and  compulsiv^e  course 
Ne'er  knows  retiring  ebb,  but  keeps  due  on 
To  the  Propontick  and  the  Hellespont; 


160  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Even    so   my    bloody    thoughts,   with    violent 

pace. 
Shall  ne'er   look  back,  ne'er   ebb  to  humble 

love. 
Till  that  a  capable  and  wide  revenge 
Swallow  them  up. 

Reduce  this  to  prose  and  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  read  it  with  a  sober  face.  It 
is  the  metre,  the  lightning  dance  of  it, 
that  lays  common  sense  under  a  spell.  To 
say  it  slowly,  would  almost  be  to  translate 
it  into  prose.  Poetry  is  like  music,  and 
must  be  taken  at  its  proper  time ;  and  here 
the  verse  leaps,  straining  to  the  cataract  of 
the  close: 

Till  that  a  capable  and  wide  revenge 
Swallow  them  up. 

I  am  certain  that  I  have  not  been  enabled 
to  speak  according  to  my  wont,  and  have 
been  made  to  say  things  altogether  out 
of  character,  as  well  as  anachronistic ;  but, 
sir,  I  am  always  glad  to  be  resuscitated 
under  any  conditions  not  dishonourable. 


POETRY  AND  CRITICISM 


POETRY  AND  CRITICISM 


4  4  X  T  is  very  questionable  whether  a  poet 
M  can  have  any  vital  interest  in  any 
poetry  except  his  own.  I  think  a  poet 
gradually  ceases  to  take  any  interest  in 
literature  as  literature.  As  part  of  life, 
literature,  whether  it  be  poetry  or  prose, 
occupies  an  inferior  place  in  the  world. 
Compare  literature,  for  example,  with  eat- 
ing and  drinking,  with  making  love,  with 
making  money.  Literature  in  the  banquet 
of  life  is  now  a  liors  d'oeuvre,  now  a  ciga- 
rette ;  no  more  than  that.  Consider,  then, 
what  an  insignificant  thing  the  criticism  of 
literature  must  be.  I  often  wonder  who 
reads  reviews ;  with  the  exception  of  the 
reviewer  and  the  author  reviewed,  who  are 
they?  People  read  books  from  the  libra- 
rian's list  and  from  gossip  at  dinner,  not 
upon  the  advice  of  the  critic." 

163 


164  THE  MAN  FORBID 

"  Then  where  is  the  use  of  criticism  ?  " 
"  It  has  no  use,  of  course ;   but  apart 
from  the  question  of  utility,  this  enormous 
production  of  books  of  all  kinds,  and  the 
daily,  weekly,  monthly,  quarterly  waste  of 
criticism  is  the  result  of  enchantment.    You 
must  never   forget   that  the   whole   world 
is    enchanted.     People    can't    help    them- 
selves ;  they  have  language,  they  have  pens 
and    paper;    one    writes,    another    writes. 
And  it  is  all  inferior,  the  very  highest  of 
it,  to  a  thing  done.     The  power  of  the  pen 
has  been  grossly  exaggerated.     Napoleon, 
not     Goethe,     made    the     modern     world. 
Everybody  knows  the  life  of  Napoleon  and 
its  meaning  —  "  the  tools  to  him  that  can 
handle  them."     Every  man  goes  Nap ;  and 
the  women  want  to  play  too." 

"  I'm  afraid  you'll  be  very  cruel  to  the 
poets." 

"  Oh  no !  A  poet  Is  always  a  man  of 
inordinate  ambition  and  inordinate  vanity. 
If  his  every  book  is  not  universally  pro- 
nounced the  finest  poetry  since  Shakespeare 


POETRY  AND  CRITICISM       l6o 

he  incontinently  breaks  his  heart.  But  if 
he  is  really  a  poet  his  heart  mends  again, 
and  is  the  stronger  for  the  catastrophe. 
I  do  not  say  this  to  signify  that  I  purpose 
splintering  hearts  out  of  kindness.  I 
merely  indicate  that  I  understand  the  po- 
etical temperament,  and  that  if  I  should 
hurt  anyone,  I  know  the  immense  recuper- 
ative power  of  the  poet  too  well  to  be 
over-concerned;  and  everybody  will  tell 
you  that  if  a  poet  or  any  other  writer  can 
be  killed  by  criticism  the  sooner  it  is  done 
the  better." 


tete-X-t:^te 


tete-a-t:^te 

Fronde.  Carlyle. 

FROUDE.  I  have  often  thought  that 
we  need  in  Hterature  something  anal- 
ogous to  Pre-Raphaehtism  in  art. 

Carlyle.     What  is  Pre-Raphaehtism? 

F.  I  hardly  know.  The  Pre-Raphael- 
ites  were,  I  believe,  artists  who  picked  up 
art  not  where  Raphael  left  off  but  where 
he  began. 

C  It  doesn't  matter  much.  Their 
idea,  I  dare  say,  was  to  get  rid  of  all  con- 
vention, and  begin  art  over  again  for 
themselves.  And  that  was  highly  com- 
mendable. Something  analogous  to  that 
is  desirable  in  literature.  Tennyson  with 
his  confections  of  passion  for  use  in  ladies' 
seminaries,  and  Browning  with  his  frantic, 
terrified  optimism,  and  the  restless,  over- 

169 


170  THE  MAN  FORBID 

hasty  spiiining-jcnnj  in  his  head,  are  not 
much  to  my  hking.  They  both  of  them 
represent  England  of  the  broadened  fran- 
chise and  repealed  corn-law;  they  are 
bourgeois  to  the  core,  and  rose  to  emi- 
nence with  the  rise  of  the  middle  class, 
the  dominant  factor  in  the  life  of  the  cen- 
tury. 

F.  What  do  you  say  to  "  The  City  of 
Dreadful  Night,"  by  James  Thomson? 

C  Thomson's  poems  will  always  com- 
mand attention  because  they  sprang  di- 
rectly out  of  his  life.  I  think  that  he  was 
by  Nature  endowed  beyond  any  of  the 
English  poets  of  his  time.  There  are  no 
half -measures  with  Nature  when  she  really 
takes  a  matter  in  hand.  And  so  she  gave 
Thomson,  let  us  say,  passion  and  intellect 
second  only  to  Shakespeare's ;  fitted  him 
for  the  fullest  life  —  not  that  he  might 
occupy  and  enjoy,  however.  Nature  is  the 
great  spendthrift.  She  will  burn  up  the 
world  some  day  to  attain  what  will  prob- 
ably seem  to  us  a  very  inadequate  end ;  and 


T^TE-A-T^TE  171 

in  order  to  have  things  stated  at  their 
worst,  once  for  all,  in  English,  she  took 
a  splendid  genius  and  made  him  —  an 
Army  schoolmaster ;  starved  his  intellect, 
starved  his  heart,  starved  his  body.  All 
the  adversity  of  the  world  smote  him;  and 
that  nothing  should  be  wanting  to  her 
purpose.  Nature  took  care  that  the  very 
sun  should  smite  him  also  1  And  how  gal- 
lantly the  victim  bore  himself!  Time  will 
avenge  him :  he  is  among  the  immortals. 
He,  indeed,  is  a  Pre-Shakespearian. 

F.  Ha !  What  do  you  mean  by  a  Pre- 
Shakespearian  ? 

C.  I  mean,  first  of  all,  Shakespeare 
himself.  Shakespeare  was  no  Shakespear- 
ian. Often  the  name  of  a  cult  is  a  mis- 
nomer. Three  centuries  of  English  inepti- 
tude have  made  of  Shakespeare  —  not  only 
the  popular  Shakespeare,  but  the  Shake- 
speare of  the  schools  —  a  very  tame  and 
bloodless  portent  indeed,  the  sunig  person 
written  of  by  Hallam,  Tennyson's  "  Shake- 
speare, bland  and  mild."     They  have  made 


172  THE  MAN   FORBID 

of  him  a  sort  of  statue  of  Memnon,  with  an  M 

infinity  of  notes,  it  is  true,  which  responded  I 

to  the  sunset  as  well  as  the  sunrise,  and 
to  other  reagents;  but  still  an  automaton, 
a  musical  box  which  could  play  any  tune, 
with  a  preference,  surprising  in  mechan- 
ism, to  go  off  with  Hamlet.  Precisely  into 
Hamlet,  the  mediocrity,  the  man  in  the 
street ;  a  loquacious  person ;  a  busybody, 
given  to  reading  books  after  dinner  and 
scribbling  on  the  margins ;  one  that  kept 
a  diary  and  wrote  letters  to  the  newspa- 
pers. A  Parliament-man,  a  debater!  He 
would  have  been  a  good  bishop,  a  good 
under-secretary ;  and  might  have  remained 
solvent  as  a  stock-broker.  This  is  the 
Shakespeare  of  the  English  ;  the  cult  of  the 
Shakespearians.  Hamlet,  the  middle-class 
man,  stares  out  of  all  our  middle-class  lit- 
erature; and  there  is  practically  no  other 
in  England.  Hamlet !  Why,  Shakespeare 
was  himself  a  world:  Coriolanus  and  Fal- 
staff  are  the  poles  of  him:  Hamlet  is  no- 
body ;  I  prefer  lago. 


TETE-A-TETE  173 

F.  Would  you  have  our  literature  de- 
velop out  of  lago  and  Thersites? 

C.  I  would  not  have  it  develop  out  of 
Shakespeare  at  all.  I  would  have  men  put 
Shakespeare  aside  for  half  a  century.  He 
is  in  the  wa3^  Suddenly  we  find  that 
Shakespeare  blocks  the  road.  He  was  ad- 
mirable, he  was  necessary  before  steam ; 
the  world  would  have  been  at  a  standstill 
without  him.  Now  it  can't  get  on  because 
of  him.  Steam,  electricity,  and  the  news- 
paper have  made  Shakespeare  out  of  date ; 
it  is  they  that  have  turned  the  world  upside 
down ;  they  and  a  little  word  Evolution 
have  wrought  in  sixty  years  a  greater 
change  than  was  elaborated  in  all  the  cen- 
turies from  the  first  Christian  community 
to  sansculottism.  Men  don't  know  it,  or 
hate  to  recognise  it;  they  try  to  be  what 
their  literature  is,  what  their  old  establish- 
ments are  or  seem.  They  read  Hamlet  and 
are  Shakespearian  in  an  empire  the  inhab- 
itants of  which  are  mainly  Mohammedans, 
Brahmans,  Fire-worshippers ;  in  a  country 


174  THF.  MAN   FORBID 

where  the  race  for  wealth  has  set  niorahty 
coughing  and  sweating  in  a  galloping  con- 
sumption ;  at  a  time  when  the  aristocracy 
of  intellect —  (the  English  from  the  most 
heraldic  peer  to  the  sireless  apprentice  arc 
the  middle-class  of  Europe,  the  prosperous, 
pushing  shop-walkers  of  the  world)  ;  at  a 
time  when  the  aristocracy  of  intellect  have 
set  their  crucibles  in  the  furnace,  and  have 
thrown  in  everything,  themselves  and  all 
the  past,  the  English  are  reading  Hamlet. 
The  hen  thought  the  sky  was  falling 
when  the  pea  dropped  on  her  head;  but 
the  skies  have  fallen  —  on  the  wicked  g-ame- 
cock  across  the  Channel,  thinks  the  Eng- 
lish bird  of  dawning.  We  are  a  great 
race. 

F.     Out  of  what,  then,  is  this  desirable 
Pre-Shakespearianism  to  evolve? 

C.     Out  of  a  reverence  for  fact. 

F.     That  has  been  tried  in  the  cult  of 
le  sens  du  reel,  in  realism,  in  naturalism. 

C.     I  did  not  say  a  reverence  for  matter- 
of-fact. 


TETE-A-TETE  175 

F.     Indeed   it   was   a   hideous   develop- 
ment. 

C.  Oh,  much  adverse  comment  has 
been  ehcited  by  the  writings  of  a  certain 
school ;  but  the  acute  stage  is  past,  and 
literature  has  been  purged  of  some  of  the 
peccant  humours  that  accumulate  during 
periods  of  transition:  the  python  comes 
forth  brilliant  from  his  old  skin,  but  the 
process  of  sloughing  is  not  comely.  That 
matter-of-fact  fiction,  as  far  as  it  suc- 
ceeded in  being  matter-of-fact,  was  the 
mere  lifeless  eschar  of  literature ;  through 
it  the  new  tegument  appeared  living  and 
healthy.  But  truly  it  was  in  dead  earnest. 
It  tried  to  wrap  its  imagination  in  a  nap- 
kin, bury  it  certain  fathoms  in  the  earth, 
and  go  about  with  a  notebook  painting  its 
epoch.  That  could  not  last ;  that  could 
not  even  get  begim.  The  point  of  view 
of  realism  was  essentially  the  Devil's  point 
of  view.  The  adversary,  the  accuser, 
started  out  with  notebook  and  stylographic 
pen. 


176  THE  MAN  FORBID 

F.  It  might  h'ave  shamed  our  easy-go- 
ing sinners  to  know  that  tlie  chance  of 
escaping  detection  was  much  minimised 
when  the  Devil  learned  shorthand. 

C.  Oil,  no !  for  the  Devil,  when  he  set 
himself  to  examine  the  matter  carefully, 
discovered  that  man  is  a  stomach,  first  and 
last.  For  some  time,  this  discovery,  like 
the  discovery  of  the  New  World,  was  a 
thing  expected,  a  thing  known  —  but  how 
to  get  there.''  Like  all  great  achievements 
it  was  quite  simple  —  easier  than  setting 
an  egg  on  its  end,  or  sailing  to  America. 

F.     How,  then.'' 

C.  By  asserting  it.  "  Man  is  a  stom- 
ach." Great  is  assertion.  At  once  the 
complex  world  is  simplified.  It  is  found 
to  consist  of  beef  and  greens,  which  man, 
the  stomach,  can  distil  into  blood.  But 
how  is  this.?  What  has  happened  to  our 
sublime  theory  of  irregular  verbs  .'^  How 
has  the  stomach  become  saddled  with  this 
Old  Man  of  the  Sea,  these  entirely  supere- 
rogatory organs  which  perform  the  unwar- 


T^TE-A-TETE  177 

rantable  functions  of  thinking  and  imag- 
ining? How  much  better  if  man  had  been 
as  the  hj'dras,  patent  reversible  handbags 
that  live  most  self-sufficinglj  in  ditches,  and 
can  be  turned  outside-in  without  damage. 
Alas !  man  is  not  a  hydra.  The  great  dis- 
covery turned  out  to  be  no  discovery.  The 
realist  assiduously  attempting  to  set  down 
whatever  is  commonplace,  whatever  is  mat- 
ter-of-fact, en  pleine  platitude,  struggling 
to  circumscribe  his  sens  du  reel  by  those 
things  only  which  can  be  touched,  tasted, 
smelt,  found  himself,  to  his  amazement, 
haunted  at  every  step  by  a  ghost  which 
would  not  be  laid  —  Imagination,  in  all 
men,  but  most  unescapably  in  himself.  He 
has  to  write  alone,  in  his  study,  far  from 
the  presence  of  the  people  and  business  of 
his  work.  And  the  bulk  of  his  realities  is 
picked  up  at  second-hand  —  from  reports, 
from  conversations,  newspapers,  documents. 
There  is  no  help  for  it,  but  to  imagine. 
The  attempt  has  been  made,  from  the  Dev- 
il's point  of  view,  to  state  man  as  a  stom- 


178  THE  MAN  FORBID 

acli,  and,  in  order  even  to  get  the  attempt 
started,  it  was  necessary  to  employ  what  is 
divinest  in  man  —  liis  imagination. 

F.  But  we  are  no  nearer  the  fountain 
of  a  desirable  Pre-Shakespearianism. 

C.  It  will  come !  It  will  come !  The 
first  bubblings  of  it  may  be  heard 
already. 

F.  Where?  where?  Shall  I,  for  ex- 
ample, find  a  rill  of  it  in  Nietszche? 

C.  In  Nietszche!  How  dare  you  men- 
tion Nietszche  to  me?  A  great  man;  a 
man  of  unexampled  divulsive  power,  but 
spoilt  for  want  of  a  knowledge  of  my  writ- 
ings. And  it  is  your  fault  —  your  meagre 
nature  that  could  make  no  more  of  me  than 
that  ill-tempered,  lugubrious  figure  you  so 
often  bored  to  death.  Your  life  of  me  is 
the  worst  disservice  literature  has  ever  suf- 
fered. Out  of  it  the  world  knows  me,  and 
cares  not  for  my  books  on  that  account. 
It  is  Froude,  not  Carljde,  that  the  world 
and  Nietszche  know ;  of  you  Nietszche's 
final  word  on  me  may  be  true :  "  He  is  an 


TETE-A-TETE  179 

English  atheist  who  aspires  to  honom'  for 
not  being  one."  It  is  false  of  me.  The 
realist  would  state  the  world  as  stomach. 
Nietszche  stated  it  as  Chaos.  Both  have 
been  called  Diabolists ;  but  there  is  no  such 
being  as  a  Diabolist.  Even  those  wretched 
creatures  who  celebrate  the  black  mass  are 
in  that  very  act  non-diabolic,  for  they  are 
endeavouring  to  worship.  God,  as  well  as 
the  Devil,  is  in  all  men.  Had  I  written  my 
"  Exodus  from  Houndsditch  "  I  would  have 
employed  the  Devil  to  burn  up  the  weeds, 
but  I  would  have  saved  the  ethical  hemp- 
stalk  of  it.  In  Nietszche's  "  Exodus  from 
Houndsditch  "  he  has  burat  up  the  moral- 
ity, too ;  he  could  see  nothing  else  for  it 
but  that.  Woe's  me !  The  message  which 
is  in  the  very  name  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh 
has  fallen  on  stony  ground! 

F.  I  have  heard  that  Nietszche,  having 
destroyed  the  whole  world  of  thought,  in- 
tended a  reconstruction. 

C.  He  did.  He  meant  to  restate  the 
world  as  Lust  for  Power. 


180  THE  MAN  FORBID 

F.  Would  3^ou  recommend  Englishmen 
to  read  Nictszche? 

C.  I  would  indeed.  Such  a  tonic  the 
world  of  letters  has  not  had  for  a  thousand 
years.  Nictszche  set  himself,  smiling,  to 
dislodge  the  old  earth  from  its  orbit;  and 
—  it  is  something  against  such  odds  —  the 
dint  of  his  shoulder  will  remain  for  ever. 


TETE-X-T^TE 


TETE-1-TETE 

Baptist  Lake.  Islay  Inglis. 

BAPTIST  LAKE.  I  haven't  seen  you 
for  five  years.  Where  have  you 
been  ? 

Islay  Inglis.     In  Dover,  for  a  hohday. 

B.L.     Dover?     Well! 

/.  /.  I  know  what  you  mean  ;  but  I  tried 
Folkestone,  and  found  it  intolerable.  I 
sat  on  a  chair  on  the  Leas  all  a  forenoon. 
The  band  played ;  the  seated  crowd,  all  on 
chairs,  mainly  ladies,  hushed  and  solemn, 
glanced  furtively  at  labelled  fiction,  cau- 
tiously turning  the  leaf.  Gentlemen, 
groomed  like  carriage-hacks,  attired  in  hot- 
pressed  suits  they  seemed  afraid  to  crease, 
conversing  at  intervals  in  diplomatic  whis- 
pers, trod  the  withered  turf  —  withered  and 
beaten  to  powder  by  the  unslaked  steps  of 

183 


184  THE  MAN  FORBID 

the  march  of  summer  and  the  superfine 
tread  of  uneasy  fashion.  The  flame-tipped 
music  of  Carmen,  the  molten  sapphire  of 
the  sea,  the  saffron  beach  far  down,  and  the 
lofty  sun  emptying  its  inexhaustible  urn 
of  fire,  were  all  tamed  and  fettered  to  the 
living  death  of  a  well-to-do  crowd,  en- 
chanted out  of  humanity  into  the  likeness 
of  unedified  and  unedifying  creatures.  At 
Folkestone  Holiday  is  a  Function. 

B.  L.  Terrible;  but  accurate,  I  fear. 
Function  is  the  gangrene  of  modern  social 
life.     But  what  led  you  to  Dover .? 

/.  7.     Chance.     I  — . 

B.  L.  Now,  how  often  have  I  asked  you, 
Islay,  never  to  use  the  word  "  chance  "  ? 
The  use  of  misnomers  is  the  propagation  of 
ignorance.  Endeavour  always  to  think  the 
unthinkable ;  give  at  least  a  new  name  to 
the  unknown,  and  in  time  you  will  pave  the 
abyss  and  cast  a  bridge  over  the  Milky 
Way.  You  went  to  Dover,  you  say,  actu- 
ated by  the  profound  law  which  led  you 
there.     Well.? 


TETE-A-TETE  185 

/.  7.  ]\ly  first  intention  was  to  walk 
about  Romney  Marsh.  You  know  "  the 
earth  is  divided  into  Europe,  Asia,  Africa, 
America,  and  Romney  Marsh."  Romney 
Marsh  is,  I  suppose,  one  of  the  newest 
pieces  of  land  in  the  Old  World.  No  an- 
cient Briton  ever  trod  its  southern  verge; 
and  the  waves  rolled  over  it  while  the  neigh- 
bouring seaboards  echoed  the  drums  and 
tramplings  of  three  conquests.  There 
must  be  virtue  in  such  vii^gin  soil.  It  is 
the  true  country  for  Antaeus.  But  there 
was  no  room  in  Dymchurch,  not  even  in 
the  inn  —  the  virtue  of  the  land  is  known  to 
many.  So  I  forwent  Romney  Marsh,  and 
took  rooms  on  the  Marine  Parade  in  Dover 
after  that  dreadful  experience  at  Folke- 
stone. 

B.  L.  Was  that  beautiful  girl  with  you 
—  Rose  Salerne,  who  drank  shandy-gafF 
with  the  thirst  of  perdition  in  the  "  Rose 
and  Crown  "  at  Pilgrimstow? 

/.  /.     Rose  Inglis  now,  Baptist. 


186  THE  MAN  FORBID 

B.  L.  You  married  her  !  My  dear  boy, 
that  was  exquisite  of  you. 

/.  /.     I  think  it  was  exquisite  of  us  both. 

B.  L.     And  so  daring ! 

/.  /.  True ;  the  marriage  of  a  really  in- 
telligent couple  is  now  the  most  daring  ex- 
ploit reserved  for  the  adventurous. 

B.  L.  It  was  more  daring  to  go  to 
Dover  for  a  holiday. 

/.  /.  Not  for  me.  I  was  quite  at  home 
in  Dover.  The  majority  of  the  holiday- 
makers  there  are  of  the  lower-middle  class, 
to  which  I  belong. 

B.  L.     The  lower-middle  class,  Islay.^' 

I.  I.  Yes ;  the  fountain  of  aristocracy 
—  not,  of  course,  the  parasitical  aristoc- 
racy of  birth  and  title,  but  the  best  blood 
and  brain  of  the  world.  Consider  it  briefly, 
at  a  venture.  Homer,  Virgil,  Dante, 
Shakespeare,  Goethe,  Burns,  Carlyle,  all  of 
humble  extraction. 

B.  L.     Dante? 

/.  /.     On  the  mother's  side,  certainly. 

B.  L.     Cervantes.'' 


TETE-A-TETE  187 

/.  7.  There  must  be  exceptions ;  but 
although  Cervantes'  parentage  was  of  rank 
on  both  sides,  in  order  that  what  was  best 
in  him  should  appear  he  had  to  be  brought 
lower  even  than  the  lower-middle  class ;  out 
of  slavery  and  prison  he  came,  the  greatest 
man  as  man  of  those  who  lived  by  writing. 

B.  L.     And  what  about  men  of  action? 

7.  7.  Zenghis  Khan,  Tamerlane  — 
sheepstealers  and  landloupers ;  Moses,  the 
son  of  slaves  in  Egypt ;  Mahomet's  father, 
although,  like  all  the  lower-middle  class, 
related  to  some  of  the  highest  families,  was 
a  poor  man  ;  Alexander  of  Macedon,  Julius 
Caesar,  William  the  Conqueror,  Napoleon 
Bonaparte,  Abraham  Lincoln  —  a  tide  of 
elemental  blood  beat  in  the  hearts  of  all 
these. 

B.  L.  Alexander,  the  son  of  a  king  and 
of  a  king's  daughter? 

7.  7.  The  son  of  a  king's  daughter,  the 
luxurious  Olympias;  his  father  may  have 
been  anybody :  Philip  himself  was  willing 
to  ascribe  the  paternity  to  Jupiter.     Wil- 


188  THE  MAN  FORBID 

liain  the  Conqueror,  the  tanner's  grandson, 
is  a  typical  example ;  Robert  of  Normandy, 
the  parasitical  aristocrat  of  birth  and  title, 
in  order  that  his  son  might  be  more  than 
that,  was  compelled  to  select  his  mother 
from  the  lower-middle  classes.  Of  escutch- 
eons that  seem  without  a  blot,  who  can  tell 
how  many  mothers,  in  order  that  their  sons 
might  be  great,  had  to  fall  back  on  illegiti- 
mate fathers? 

B.  L.  I  should  like  to  see  you  attempt 
a  grammatical  analysis  of  that  last  sen- 
tence !  So,  then,  in  order  to  support  your 
theory,  you  would  tarnish  the  fame  of 
queens  ? 

/.  /.  Nothing  is  sacred  to  the  theorist. 
But  you  make  me  outrageously  discursive. 
I  say,  I  went  to  Dover  with  Rose ;  and  we 
delighted  in  it,  because  it  is  a  holiday  resort 
of  the  lower-middle  classes.  We  sat  on  the 
beach  and  watched  the  young  Mahomets 
and  Tamerlanes  at  play ;  we  paraded  the 
pier  to  the  strains  of  the  military  band; 
and  all  the  evenings  were  Elysian  with  the 


TETE-A-T^TE  189 

electric  illumination  of  the  Marine  Parade. 
The  wandering  minstrel  sang  — 

Rhoda    rode    a    roadster    on    tlie    road    to 
Ryde; 
I  also  rode  a  roadster  on  the  road  by  Rhoda's 
side; 
When  next  I  ride  to  Ryde  with  Rhoda  she 
will  be  my  bride: 
I  bless  the  day  that  Rhoda  rode  a  roadster ! 

and  we  applauded,  and  gave  him  twopence. 
We  went  to  the  theatre  thrice  in  the  fort- 
night (twice  a  year  is  all  we  can  endure 
in  London)  and  had  the  vitality  to  survive 
the  artificial  dulness  of  The  Lady  Slavey, 
and  the  academic  morals  of  Liberty  Hall 
and  The  Idler.  At  night  the  moon  laid 
out  along  the  sea  a  rouleau  of  silver  discs ; 
the  Calais  Phare  twinkled  intermittently,  a 
yellow  lantern,  and  Cape  Gray  Nose  burst 
in  anapestic  flame  —  two  white,  one  red  — 
across  the  Channel,  visible  from  the  Bell 
Harry  Tower  in  Canterbury,  sixteen  miles 
inland.     On  the  evening  of  Dover  Regatta, 


190  THE  MAN  FORBID 

a  magician  from  London  with  magnesium 
and  pyrotechnic  sorcery  fanned  the  pale 
chffs  into  a  red  passion  of  flame  and  rolHng 
smoke ;  the  castle  shone  white ;  catherine- 
wheels  whirled  agonised ;  rockets  scaled  the 
heavens  in  vain ;  the  archways  in  the  cliff- 
face  glowed  like  the  gates  of  hell ;  and  the 
youthful  Tamerlanes  and  Mahomets  gazed 
awestruck  from  the  pier-head  on  Satan's 
invisible  world  displayed.  In  the  daytime 
we  visited  all  the  Cinque  Ports :  Hastings, 
with  its  grey  castle  and  gay  crowd ;  Win- 
chelsea,  sad  and  sweet,  haunted  and  haunt- 
ing, to  which  the  sea  was  twice  a  traitor  — 
by  inundation,  and  then,  in  cruellest  irony, 
by  desertion ;  Rye,  pleasant,  compact  on 
hilly  streets  —  an  old  church  with  gilded 
quarter-boys,  and,  through  an  old  gate, 
masts  and  the  misty  sea ;  the  two  Romneys, 
silent,  deserted  in  that  strange  new  land 
where  the  grey  rails  glisten  across  beds  and 
bars  of  shingle,  and  shining  meres  spread 
among  loops  of  flat  green  land ;  Hythe, 
with  its  treasure  of  hacked  skulls  —  Briton, 


TETE-A-T^TE  191 

Saxon,  Roman,  Dane,  gathered  from  a 
long-forgotten  battlefield;  and  Sandwich, 
oldest,  greyest,  quaintest  of  English  towns, 
looking  mournfully  from  three  high 
churches  at  the  distant  treacherous  sea. 
And  on  Sundays  I  went  to  Calais  to  be 
shaved. 

B.  L.     To  Calais? 

7.  /.  That  is  an  operation  I  could  never 
achieve  without  hacking  my  face;  and  as 
the  barbers  are  all  closed  in  Dover  on  Sun- 
days and  I  had  omitted  to  tryst  one,  we 
went  to  Calais.  Return  tickets,  fifteen 
shillings;  luncheons,  six  shillings;  Figaro, 
half  a  franc  —  twenty-one  and  sixpence  for 
a  shave.     You  see,  we  were  on  a  holiday. 

B.  L.  You  have  described  to  me  an 
actual,  unconventional,  and  high-spirited 
holiday.     I  should  have  enjoyed  it  myself. 


CHANCTONBURY  RING 


Extracts  from  the  following  essays  have 
appeared  heretofore  in  an  English  volume 
but  they  are  published  now  for  the  first  time 
in  their  entirety. 


CHANCTONBURY    RING 

STEYNING,  an  ancient  town  of  a  reti- 
cent aspect,  most  picturesque,  but  fin- 
ished, full  of  variety  and  engaging  detail, 
stands  on  the  highway  to  Horsham  where 
the  road  rises  to  a  spur  of  the  Downs.  It 
is  a  place  of  gables,  oaken  beams,  shingle 
roofs,  mature-looking  wooden  houses,  a 
place  of  stepped  pavements  and  of  old  gar- 
dens. The  railway  approached  it,  but  kept 
its  distance.  Nothing  has  soiled  it ;  it  be- 
longs to  a  prior  century.  One  would  be 
glad  to  see  it  once  a  week  on  an  afternoon 
of  mellow  sunshine ;  then  its  warmth,  its  old 
homeliness,  the  sense  of  room  about  it,  and 
of  the  easiness  of  life,  deliver  the  thought 
and  refresh  the  fancy  like  a  well-dreamed 
sleep.  Its  air  of  mystery  is  never  wanting 
either.    Deep  doorways,  overhanging  eaves, 

195 


19o  THE  MAN  FORBID 

.beams  strained  and  bent,  narrow  entries, 
windows  low  and  broad,  or  high  and  secret, 
are  loaded  with  meaning.  Towns  and 
houses  are  your  only  ghosts.  Finger  on 
lip,  Steyning  haunts  the  foot  of  Chancton- 
bury  Ring,  a  picturesque  phantom  of  the 
old  order,  a  stationary  ghost  likely  to  tarry 
long  since  the  nineteenth  century  itself  has 
failed  to  lay  it. 

Out  of  Steyning  the  by-way  to  Chanc- 
tonbury  Ring  runs  for  a  short  mile  through 
a  narrow  valley,  and  then  ascends  the  flank 
of  the  Downs.  In  the  close  silence  of  the 
steep-banked  way,  sounds  drifted  or  swung 
at  anchor :  the  carnival  music  of  the  thrush  ; 
the  starling's  castanets ;  the  muted  cymbals 
and  triangles  of  some  stubborn  hammering 
bird.  On  either  hand  leafless  elms  rose 
from  the  crest  of  the  slope,  and  bonfires  of 
dark  green  boxwood,  whose  new  leaves 
flamed  like  greenish  gold,  studded  the  op- 
posing acclivities.  Ground-ivy,  darker  even 
than  the  boxwood,  whose  new  leaves  flamed 
like  greenish  gold,  festooned  the  way  ;  night 


CHANCTONBURY  RING         197 

and  the  sea  were  mixed  in  the  hue  of  this 
ivy,  and  its  white  veins  ghnnnered  hke  pen- 
cilhngs  of  foam.  Dandchons,  broad  and 
thick-rayed,  as  richly  petalled  as  chrysan- 
themums, and  of  a  golden  hue  unrivalled 
by  any  flower,  shone  out  in  clusters  and  con- 
stellations, stars  of  the  first  magnitude  in 
a  galaxy  of  cuckoo-buds  amid  a  sky  of 
violets. 

The  wind  was  easterly,  and  its  shrill  pipe 
made  itself  heard  as  soon  as  the  road  left 
the  valley  and  set  itself  against  the  Down. 
But  here  the  northern  slopes  are  fledged 
with  beech,  and  the  hills  looked  comely 
even  in  the  bleak  weather  of  this  wintry 
April.  Violets  and  hyacinths  diapered  with 
purple  the  russet  beech-mast,  though  the 
cowslips  hoarded  their  gold  in  their  pale 
green  chalices.  The  white-starred  branches 
of  the  blackthorn  sprinkled  the  prevailing 
bronze  and  purple  of  the  covert  with  sparse 
sprays  of  silver;  and  the  emerald  banners 
of  the  downy,  crisp,  and  pleated  beech- 
leaves  claimed  the  time  for  middle-spring, 


198  THE  MAN  FORBID 

in  spite  of  the  attempted  piracy  of  winter. 
In  a  bio-ht  of  the  land,  the  white,  chalky 
plain,  shaded  with  the  sprouting  down  of 
the  young  corn,  showed  where  the  tide  of 
harvest  will  run  far  up,  and  break  against 
the  swelling  hill. 

When  the  crest  of  the  Downs  was 
reached,  Chanctonbury  Ring  was  still  a 
mile  away ;  from  the  long  easy  slope  of  the 
ridge,  the  back-bone  of  the  world  in  that 
neighbourhood,  Sussex  stretched  out  on  the 
one  hand,  and  Sussex  and  the  sea  on  the 
other  —  great  and  varied  prospects,  but 
constant  quantities  for  a  mile:  an  inter- 
locutor became  at  once  desirable.  That  is 
the  secret  of  the  proficient,  the  truly  pere- 
grinate wayfarer.  Given  a  winding  road 
with  constant  surprises,  a  straight,  confined 
road  leading  to  the  unknown,  or  a  steep 
ascent  that  taxes  the  breath,  then  the  way- 
farer is  naturally  occupied  in  observing, 
in  expecting,  or  in  enduring;  but  when  he 
reaches  some  agreeable  and  unexacting 
path,   with   the   goal   in   sight,   and   wide, 


CHANCTONBURY  RING         199 

detached,  far-reaching  views  on  either 
hand,  he  must  let  his  mind  go.  Should  he 
compel  it  in  the  strict  way  of  observation 
he  errs  lamentably,  and  will  find  the  land- 
scape unsatisfying ;  he  must  think  of  some- 
thing else.  Best  of  all  would  be  an  actual 
companion :  on  the  lonely  top  of  the  Downs 
constant  recourse  must  be  had  to  imaginary 
people,  disputatious  or  otherwise,  who  sur- 
prise one  by  starting  subjects  thought  to 
be  at  rest,  by  talking  of  men  and  things 
one  had  laid  on  the  shelf.  The  Imaginary 
Disputant  began  about  Ibsen  and  the  per- 
sonality of  dramatists. 

"  In  my  opinion,"  said  the  Disputant, 
"  no  writer  reveals  himself  more  fully  than 
the  dramatist.  It  is  inevitable.  The  mo- 
ment you  begin  to  consider  the  springs  of 
action  and  the  motives  of  conduct,  there 
is  one  subject  always  at  hand  from  infancy 
to  death.  Unconsciously,  perhaps,  at  first 
your  intimate  acquaintance  with  this  sub- 
ject appears  in  your  work  ;  then,  if  you  are 
not  a  mere  botcher  and  charlatan,  sooner  or 


2.00  THE  MAN  FOlllilD 

later  the  true  source  of  man's  knowledge  of 
human  nature  is  revealed  to  you.  It  is  a 
terrible  revelation ;  but  you  cannot,  you 
dare  not,  ignore  it.  You  try  to,  doubtless ; 
you  even  think  you  succeed  in  doing  so ; 
but  your  own  accent  and  semblance  are 
heard  and  seen  in  the  vilest  wretches,  the 
grossest  fools,  as  well  as  in  the  sweetest 
natures  and  the  most  heroic  characters 
wherewith  you  mask  the  good  and  evil  in 
yourself." 

"  But  can  a  dramatist  not  portray  at  all, 
then,  another  than  himself?  Dramatists 
have  drawn  women  successfully,  for  ex- 
ample." 

"  Yes,  but  think  of  the  women.  Wher- 
ever there  is  vital  power  at  work  the  dram- 
atist's people  are  of  one  mould  and  order. 
Compare  Ibsen's  women  with  Shakespeare's. 
However  widely  each  author's  women  may 
differ  among  themselves,  Cleopatra  and 
Imogen  are  hardly  distinguishable  from 
each  other  when  you  contrast  them  with 
Hitirdis  and  Asta  Allmers.     This  sub-con- 


CHANXTONBURY  RING         201 

sciousness,  what  is  basic  in  the  dramatist, 
appears  in  all  his  creations." 

"  Well,  of  course,  it  must  do  so ;  when 
you  come  to  think  of  it,  it  cannot  be  other- 
wise. 

"  Yes,  but  the  literary  world  generally 
seems  loath  to  acknowledge  it.  Fear  lurks 
behind  the  loathing,  I  think.  Byron  is  the 
type  of  the  protesting  author,  terrified  at 
the  self-betrayal  in  his  works." 

"  About  Ibsen,  however.  He  has  be- 
trayed himself  —  he,  the  strongest,  most 
self-contained  of  all  poets  and  dramatists  ?  " 

"  Strong,  but  not  self-contained  —  any- 
thing but  self-contained.  His  plays  smoke 
with  his  personality.  That  is  the  very  note 
of  the  man :  that  is  his  originality.  The 
characters  in  the  best-known  of  Ibsen's 
plays,  his  later  ones,  professional,  middle 
class,  and  lower-middle  class  people,  are  as 
dull  and  uninteresting  as  they  can  be ;  and 
yet  he  has  peopled  the  imagination  of  the 
Europe  of  his  time  with  these  undistin- 
guished beings,  because  they  are  all  Ibsen. 


202  THE  MAN  FORBID 

They  were  metal  of  no  mark  or  value: 
Ibsen  alloys  them  with  his  personality, 
stamps  them  with  his  image  and  super- 
scription, and  they  become  current 
throughout  the  world.  A  mistaken  real- 
ism seems  to  advise  the  drawing  of  men 
exactly  as  they  are.  If  it  could  be  done, 
you  would  have  at  last  something  worthy 
to  be  called  a  caput  mortuum;  but  it  is  an 
impossibility.  You  could  no  more  take 
crude  man  and  place  him  in  a  novel  or  a 
play  —  that  is,  make  him  literature,  than 
you  could  make  a  lump  of  iron  ore  into  a 
carving-knife  by  laying  it  on  the  table 
along  with  a  fork  and  steel.  Humanity  is 
the  raw  material  of  literature;  the  smelt- 
ing, the  fining,  the  casting,  the  shaping, 
the  damascening  are  the  work  of  the  crea- 
tive artist,  whose  indispensable  medium  is 
his  own  personality." 

"  Well,  then,  how  would  you  describe  the 
personality  of  Ibsen  ?  " 

"  Ah  !  I  am  too  near  him  —  and  here 
we  are  at  the  top  of  the  hill." 


CHANCTONBURY  RING         203 

In  the  British-Roman  work  on  the  sum- 
mit of  Chanctonbury  a  plantation  grows 
now.  A  woodman  with  measured  stroke 
drove  wedges  into  the  bole  of  a  tree,  and 
his  boys  plaj^ed  beside  him.  A  crescent- 
shaped  coppice  of  beech  uncut  for  years 
girdled  the  hill.  In  the  sheltered  hollows 
beeches  clustered ;  beech  groves  clad  all  the 
northern  slopes.  The  leaf-buds  of  the 
beech,  small  spear-heads  of  bronze,  washed 
the  downs  with  a  dark  ruddy  hue  like  the 
dull  glow  of  a  furnace  door.  The  haze  on 
the  horizon  beat  and  flickered,  a  heavy  eye- 
lid drooping  over  the  sky.  White  gables 
stood  out  on  the  plain,  apparitions  among 
the  dark,  budding  woods.  Red  roofs,  the 
smoke  of  houses,  cream-white  ribbons  of 
road,  touched  the  green  and  purple  ground 
with  points  of  colour  and  light.  Seaward 
the  furze  scattered  gold  over  the  rolling 
land  down  to  the  shingly  beach ;  and  the 
pearl-grey  sea  under  a  sky  of  hammered 
iron  shone  with  an  inward  lustre  treasured 
in   its   deeps   and   garnered   from  many  a 


204  THE  MAN  FORBID 


sliining  summer.  The  cast  wind  sighed 
and  wailed,  but  through  its  forlorn  note 
there  sounded  a  sheep  bell  from  the  fold 
and  a  cuckoo's  mellow  chime. 


BY-WAYS 


BY-WAYS 

THE  road  was  from  the  sea  inland,  and 
then,  for  a  mile,  parallel  with  the 
shore,  skirting  the  verge  of  the  clifFless 
Downs.  The  wind,  from  the  south-east, 
sharp  and  vapoury,  carried  brine  and  haze 
over  the  southern  counties;  but  its  trans- 
parent burden  was  barely  visible  in  the 
strong  sunshine ;  a  pallor,  as  of  the  thinnest 
coating  of  varnish,  overspread  the  faint 
blue  sky.  The  sun,  an  hour  past  noon, 
showed  small  and  round,  shorn  of  its  beams 
by  the  dim  haze ;  hot  and  glittering,  all  the 
same,  like  an  eye-hole  opening  into  a  vat 
of  molten  silver.  Upon  the  horizon  the 
vapour  began  to  build  itself  up  in  tiers  and 
courses ;  but  the  rest  of  'the  firmament  was 
clear,  save  for  the  thin  veil  of  mist  and  one 
solitary  plume  of  white  cloud  that  streamed 

207 


208  THE  MAN  FORBID 

from  the  top  of  heaven.     A  wooded  park, 
like  a  broad  hem,  edged  the  sunken  Downs. 
Groves,  avenues,  and  single  trees  resounded 
with  the  business  of  the  rookery.     The  in- 
cessant, harsh,  sibilant-raucous  noise,  rising 
and  falling  in  gusts  and  squalls,  swept  the 
park  from  end  to  end.      Sometimes  a  plan- 
gent voice  soared  out  of  the  ground-tone 
in  wild  protest  against  the  universe  or  a 
thieving  neighbour;  now  a  cloud  of  rooks 
would   rise  and  adjourn  from  their  tree- 
tops  to  a  select  space  in  the  air,  and  there 
gyrate  and  discuss  a  knotty  point  with  the 
unparliamentary    liberty    the   problem    re- 
quired; or  the  low,  deep-toned,  self-satis- 
fied   caw    of    experienced    and    well-to-do 
rooks,  who  had  settled  themselves  for  the 
season  weeks  ago,  would  become  distinctly 
audible  in  some  lull  of  the  stormy  outcry, 
some  reprieve  of  that  friction  which  the 
clan-economy  of  a-  rookery  entails. 

After  the  park  was  passed,  the  low  naked 
Downs  rose  and  dipped  like  sluggish  waves, 
like    stagnant    waves    enchanted    and    sus- 


BY-WAYS  209 

pended  there  in  ungainly  and  painful  pos- 
tures. Indeed,  there  is  nothing  in  land- 
scape more  unsatisfactory  to  the  {esthetic 
sense,  more  uncomfortable  to  the  mood  of 
the  spectator,  than  the  seaward  slope  of 
the  Downs.  Where  a  bold  escai-pment 
fronts  the  Channel  the  unnatural  condi- 
tion of  these  bereft  hills  is  not  perhaps  so 
forcible  in  its  pathetic  appeal;  but  even 
then  the  nakedness  of  the  land  distresses. 
These  low,  rolling  hills  should  be  covered 
with  forest,  as  they  were  originally.  It  is 
nature's  plan.  The  mid-Surrey  hills,  or 
the  Chllterns  between  Wendover  and 
Prince's  Risborough,  in  conformation  and 
distribution  the  very  images  of  the  South 
Downs,  are  perfect  in  the  richness,  the  se- 
crecy and  repose  of  their  wooded,  their 
heavily  draped  contours.  But  this  unfor- 
tunate range  by  the  sea  is  doomed  to  thrust 
out  along  the  shore  its  naked  slopes  and 
mounds  like  the  limbs  and  shoulders  of 
plucked  fowls.  The  expense  of  a  luxury 
is   not   calculable    in    currency   alone ;   the 


210  THE  MAN  FORBID 

beauty  of  the  South  Downs  is  the  prime 
cost  of  Southdown  mutton. 

But  the  furze  blooms  even  here.  Most 
incongruous  it  seems,  a  bracelet  of  gold 
and  emerald  high  up  on  a  brawny  arm,  all 
muscle  and  goose-flesh.  One  has  to  be 
fanciful  to  keep  these  Downs  in  coun- 
tenance. The  ploughed  land,  however, 
puts  no  strain  on  the  imagination.  Labour 
has  redeemed  it.  Nothing  is  more  beauti- 
ful than  a  ploughed  field ;  and  here,  where 
the  alloy  of  clay  and  chalk  shines  in  the 
silver-gilt  and  deeply  chased  furrows  of  the 
broad  fields,  there  seems  to  pass  over  the 
face  of  the  earth  a  smiling  promise  of  the 
golden  harvest  asleep  in  its  bosom.  Yet 
these  splendid  fields,  like  many  other 
passages,  must  be  separated  from  their  con- 
text before  their  beauty  and  prophecy  be- 
come apparent.  In  their  place  upon  the 
shivering  Downs,  when  the  sun  is  veiled  and 
the  south-east  comes  with  a  fierce  sting, 
they  might  easily  be  mistaken  for  pieces  of 
sacking,  old  corn-bags,  hung  on  the  flanks 


BY-WAYS  211 

of  the  exposed  land  in  lieu  of  a  blanket. 

The  song  of  the  lark  has  taken  entire 
possession  of  the  air.  Like  a  heaven-high 
vine  it  garlands  the  whole  firmament.  In 
the  rookery  or  here,  again,  passing  a  row 
of  sheepfolds  where  the  hillside  is  plaintive 
with  the  bleating  of  lambs,  the  larks  are 
inaudible;  but  when  these  underarrowths, 
jungles,  and  mere  wildernesses  of  sound  are 
past,  the  hanging  gardens  of  the  larks  ab- 
sorb the  senses.  From  dawn  till  dusk,  and 
from  the  middle-spring  through  the  full 
blaze  of  summer  to  the  smouldering  golden 
moons  of  autumn,  these  garlands  of  sound, 
leaf  and  flower  and  fruit,  fresco  and  fan- 
tasy and  arabesque,  will  wreathe  and  over- 
run the  shining  air. 

A  raw  path  leading  northward,  with  an 
unbarbered  hedge  on  one  side  and  forlorn 
market-gardens  on  the  other  —  a  path  that 
seemed  bound  to  end  in  a  sloui^h  of 
despond,  pulled  itself  together  suddenly", 
and  with  a  certain  air  of  knowing  its  busi- 
ness well  enough,  stepped  into  Portslade, 


212  THE  MAN  FORBID 

a  village  in  a  cup.  This  is  the  inland 
Portslade,  a  mile  above  the  railway  one 
known  to  the  South  Coast  traveller.  On 
one  lip  of  the  cup,  a  short  Early  English, 
ivy-covered  tower  of  St.  Nicholas  balances 
itself  sturdily ;  and  the  yellow  lichen  that 
lacquers  the  shingle-roof  makes  it  a  glory 
and  a  wonder  —  like  the  roof  of  heaven 
"  inlaid  Avith  patines  of  bright  gold." 
Here,  indeed,  a  green-gold  lichen  gilds 
every  rough  surface  that  the  sea-wind  can 
reach.  Stems,  branches,  twigs  of  trees, 
railings  that  have  been  long  without  a  fresh 
coat  of  paint,  the  plaster  of  the  walls  and 
of  the  houses,  are  all  enamelled  with  the  hue 
of  chrysoprase. 

A  back  way  led  to  the  northern  brow  of 
the  hill,  where  a  ghostly  windmill  overlooks 
Hanglcton.  Hangleton  Place,  a  Tudor 
manor  ensconced  in  the  valley,  is  now  a 
poultry-farm ;  and  in  Hangleton  church- 
yard is  buried  Dr.  Kenealy.  The  tomb- 
stone, erected  by  public  subscription,  as 
one  had  forgotten,  is  a  table  of  grey  gran- 


BY-WAYS  213 

ite  with  florid  mosaics  in  red  and  blue;  a 
cross  on  the  top,  and  a  four-square  band 
of  shamrocks  and  roses,  with  dates  of 
birth  and  death  about  it;  also  this  text, 
*'  Thou  shalt  be  recompensed  at  the  resur- 
rection of  the  just."  Curiously  enough, 
on  the  morning  of  the  day  the  Itinerant 
stumbled  on  Dr.  Kenealy's  tomb  the  very 
remarkable  impostor  whose  notoriety  the 
doctor  had  shared  ended  his  career  in  a 
poor  lodging  off  the  Edgware  road.  More 
years  ago  than  the  Itinerant  cares  to  re- 
member a  boy  engaged  in  weighing  por- 
tions of  16.6  grammes  of  beet  for  precipi- 
tation with  acetate  of  lead  in  the 
polariscopic  analysis  of  sugar,  saw  through 
the  glass  of  the  chemical  balance  in  the 
Public  Analyst's  Laboratory  in  Cathcart 
Street,  Greenock,  a  vast  moon  face  at  a 
window  in  an  upper  storey  of  the  Tontine 
Hotel  opposite.  Three  quarters  of  the 
face  were  visible  —  for  more  than  an  hour, 
dull,  motionless.  No  one  seemed  to  come 
into  the  room.     Did  "  the  Claimant "  sit 


214  THE  MAN  FORBID 

there  to  be  seen  of  men?  He  was  to  lec- 
ture in  the  Town  Hall  that  night.  Per- 
haps he  was  recapitulating  his  speech.  At 
any  rate,  he  sat  there  for  more  than  an 
hour,  expressionless  and  motionless.  He 
did  not  appear  to  watch  the  bustle  in  the 
street ;  he  did  not  smoke ;  he  did  not  drum 
on  anything  with  his  fingers.  He  simply 
sat  still.  To  exist  and  digest  was  enough 
for  this  man  apparently.  In  all  likeli- 
hood he  never  experienced  a  truly  unhappy 
moment.  He  was  only  an  automaton 
cunningly  fitted  with  digestion  and  mem- 
ory. If  conscience  be  deleted,  life  is  much 
simplified,  three-quarters  of  it,  conduct 
namely,  becoming  a  blank.  The  deletion, 
or  at  any  rate  the  subordination,  of  con- 
science is  well  known  to  be  a  main  factor 
in  many  a  reputation ;  and  Arthur  Orton 
had  certainly  obtained  the  upper  hand  of 
his.  Ask  the  clearest  conscience  in  the 
world  to  sit  for  an  hour  motionless,  with 
no  one  in  the  room,  and  nothing  to  do ! 
It  is  not  conscience  that  performs  feats  of 


BY-WAYS  215 

that  kind;  they  are  the  achievements  of 
genius,  or  of  beings  whose  monstrous  de- 
fects seem  to  be  equivalent  to  the  posses- 
sion of  genius. 

The  square  tower  of  Shoreham  Church, 
a  landmark  for  miles,  stood  out  on  the 
way  back,  and  in  front  of  it  the  sea,  imme- 
diately under  the  sun,  shone  with  pale  gold  ; 
but  the  rest  of  the  Channel  was  dark  and 
narrow,  for  the  haze  had  thrust  its  broad 
bastion  close  in  to  the  land.  The  haze, 
indeed,  had  become  the  main  feature  in 
that  part  of  the  world.  Built  up  on  the 
horizon,  a  magical  foundation,  the  grey 
vapour,  like  a  fragile  urn,  enclosed  the 
spaces  of  the  air.  At  the  round  mouth  of 
the  urn,  high  up,  the  sky  appeared,  a  pale 
blue  disc  against  which  the  song  of  the 
larks  beat  in  vain,  echoing  back  in  showers 
of  golden  notes. 


PROSE  ECLOGUE 


PROSE  ECLOGUE 

Basil,  Menzies,  Brian. 

BRIAN.  Have  you  ever  written  short 
stories,  Basil? 

Basil.     Never ;  nor  can  I  read  them. 

Brian.     I  rather  like  them. 

Basil.  Then  your  palate's  gone  —  I 
mean  your  mental  palate.  I  still  prefer  a 
sandwich  :  bread  —  meat  —  mustard.  The 
short  story  is  mere  mustard,  the  scanty 
dish  which  Grumio,  that  "  false,  deluding 
slave,"  jeered  Katharina  with. 

Brian.  Your  short-story  men  are  your 
only  pickle-merchants. 

Basil.  Occasionally  they  are  good  men 
gone  wrong;  oftenest  they  are  single- 
prong  men. 

Menzies.      Single-prong? 

Basil.  Yes.  Some  men  are  tridents, 
219 


220  THE  MAN  FORBID 

some  are  dinner-forks,  some  are  pitch- 
forks, and  some  have  but  one  prong.  Of 
these  last  are  the  short-story  men,  the 
"  strong  men  "  of  fiction.  They  remind 
me  of  the  Parisian  chiffonnier,  who  gathers 
from  frequented  places  with  his  pointed 
stick  odds  and  ends  of  paper  and  rags. 
They  are  an  insufferable  nuisance;  their 
pens  are  always  ready  furbished;  if  you 
so  much  as  hint  an  idea,  an  experience,  an 
episode,  they  stab  it  up  at  once  and  thrust 
it  into  their  wallets  among  an  omnium 
gatherum  of  other  half-ideas,  experiences, 
and  episodes,  where  it  lies  till  it  is  "  high," 
and  is  then  brought  forth  as  "  strong 
meat." 

Brian.     And  who  are  the  dinner  forks.? 

Basil.     Average  men,  I  suppose. 

Brian.     And  the  pitch-forks? 

Basil.  Why,  you  are  pretty  like  one, 
pursuing  relentlessly  a  passing  remark. 

Brian.  And  the  tridents.?  Come,  the 
tridents  ? 

Basil.     My  friends  and  I. 


PROSE  ECLOGUE  221 

Menzies.  Good.  Did  you  know  that  I 
had  written  short  stories? 

Brian.     No !     Tell  us  all  about  it. 

Basil.  What  is  there  to  tell  except  that 
for  every  story  he  wrote  there  is  a  grey 
hair  on  his  soul.^ 

Menzies.  That  is  true.  But  I  would 
confess ;  I  have  never  told  it  to  anyone, 
the  stories  having  been  anonymous.  The 
first  one  was  of  a  woman  I  knew;  a  tall 
fair  Scotchwoman,  with  a  perfect  oval 
face  and  large  pale  eyes.  In  her  twenty- 
fourth  year  she  married  a  painter  and  set 
herself  to  destroy  his  temperament.  I 
met  her  in  her  father's  house  shortly  after 
she  had  spoiled  her  husband,  body  and  soul ; 
and  she  told  me  the  story  herself.  "  He 
kept  talking  to  me,"  she  said,  "  of  tem- 
perament, temperament,  temperament. 
What  is  temperament?  Do  you  know? 
Does  anyone  know?  I  have  no  tempera- 
ment ;  but  I  suppose  he  had,  for  he  was 
different  from  me.  He  liked  all  kinds  of 
stupidity  and  foolishness  —  little  children. 


222  THE  MAN  FORBID 

religious  people,  romance,  and  sentiment. 
After  the  honeymoon,  when  he  went  back 
to  his  easel,  he  nearly  swooned  at  the  sight 
of  it;  for  I  had  determined  to  see  of  what 
stuff  his  temperament  was  made,  and  had 
painted  a  leer  on  the  faces  of  his  figures. 
He  tore  up  the  canvas  and  began  anew. 
As  soon  as  he  had  a  face  drawn,  at  night 
I  put  a  leer  into  the  eyes  or  a  wicked 
smile  on  the  lips.  He  went  to  his  easel 
every  morning  shaking  with  terror.  I  had 
now  fully  made  up  my  mind  that  he  should 
get  rid  of  his  temperament  and  become  as 
strong  as  I,  for  I  rather  liked  him ;  he 
was  very  handsome.  So  I  persevered  with 
his  faces,  and  was  amazed  at  his  persist- 
ence. At  last  one  morning  he  asked  me  to 
stay  beside  him  while  he  painted.  He 
drew  and  coloured  the  heads  of  three 
cherubs  with  extraordinary  rapidity  and 
force,  the  practice  which  my  device  had 
secured  him  having  increased  his  skill  im- 
mensely. The  faces  were  sweet  and  beauti- 
ful ;  and  he  asked  me  if  they  were  not  so. 


PROSE  ECLOGUE   •  223 

I  said  I  rather  liked  them,  but  that  I  saw 
nothing    particularly    sweet    about    them: 
charming     little     imps,     I     called     them. 
'  Then  I  am  a  lost  man,'  he  cried.     '  Some- 
thing terrible   has   gone   wrong  with   me. 
Day  after  day  I  paint  what  I  think  beauti- 
ful faces ;  these  that  I  have  just  done  seem 
to   me   adorable.     You   see   them   as   they 
are,  leering  and  malicious ;  and  to-morrow 
I  too  shall  see  them  as  they  are.     Some 
subtle  paralysis   has   attacked  me.'     Next 
morning,  as  usual,  he  found  his  faces  impu- 
dent or  malignant.     I  comforted  him,  and 
told  him  to  struggle  no  more  against  his 
own  nature,  but  to  follow  this  inferior  bent 
which   proclaimed   itself   in   spite   of  him. 
'  I  will,'  he  said.     '  It  may  work  itself  out.' 
Then  an  evil  spirit  took  actual  possession 
of  him,  and  he  painted  loathsome  and  hor- 
rible  things.      He   was    a   weak    man ;    his 
temperament  had  only  been  degraded,  not 
yet  destroyed.      One  night  I  changed  his 
diabolic    into    angelic    faces;    and    in    the 
morning  he  came  to  me  weeping  tears  of 


224  THE  MAN  FORBID 

joy.  '  I  have  worked  it  out,'  he  cried. 
'  I  am  free  of  it.  Yesterday,  while  I  de- 
signed what  I  thought  the  most  wicked 
group  of  countenances  ever  imagined,  I 
was  painting  divinities.  Come  and  see 
them.'  I  excused  myself  till  the  after- 
noon;  and  he,  happy  and  jubilant,  went 
out  to  walk  off  his  excitement.  In  his 
absence  I  changed  his  divinities  into  idiots 
and  maniacs.  When  at  length  he  led  me 
to  his  studio  he  had  no  eyes  for  anything 
but  me.  I  felt  him  watching  me  as  I 
stood  in  front  of  his  picture.  I  looked  at 
it,  and  then  with  cold  surprise  at  his  glad, 
eager  face.  The  blood  left  his  cheeks  like 
a  lamp  that's  blown  out;  he  glanced  at 
his  picture,  and  fell  in  a  tremor  on  the 
floor.  I  helped  him  to  a  seat,  placed  my- 
self opposite  him,  and  told  him  how  I  had 
manipulated  his  canvases  in  the  hope  of 
enabling  him  to  master  his  temperament. 
When  he  realised  what  I  said,  he  slid  from 
his  chair  glaring  at  me  as  if  I  had  been 
a  wild  beast  about  to  devour  him.      I  moved 


PROSE  ECLOGUE  225 

to  help  him  again,  but  he  shrank  from  me, 
shrieking,  '  Keep  off ! '  He  crept  back- 
wards on  his  hands  and  knees,  growhng 
and  glaring  at  me  hideously.  He  reached 
the  door  and  kicked  at  it  as  a  beast  might, 
flinging  out  his  legs.  He  has  never  stood 
erect  since ;  he  lives  in  a  stall  and  eats  out 
of  a  manger;  the  asylum  doctor  says  he 
cannot  recover.  What  is  temperament? 
Have  I  destroyed  his,  or  is  it  now  rampant  ? 
How  weak  he  was !  Is  temperament  what 
people  used  to  mean  by  soul?  "  What  do 
3'ou  think  of  that? 

Brian.     It's  very  strong. 

Basil.     Very  fair  mustard. 

Menzies.  Right!  It's  just  mustard, 
and  not  really  strong;  no  bread,  no  meat, 
merely  condiment.  In  the  famous  old 
image,  it  is  a  convulsion ;  sometimes  six 
men  can't  hold  a  feeble  epileptic.  But  I 
got  to  like  fits,  especially  as  I  found  that 
I  possessed  the  knack  of  taking  them ;  so 
I  had  a  series  in  various  periodicals ;  and 
got  good   money   too:  people  are  always 


226  THE  MAN  FORBID 

generous  to  a  man  in  a  fit.  Gradually, 
however,  it  became  more  difficult  to  fall 
into  them ;  I  had  to  work  myself  up  — 
with  stimulants.  At  last  nothing  would 
cause  them ;  and  I  took  to  feigning  them 
— picking  up  episodes  like  the  ch'iffonnier 
in  your  image,  instead  of  creating:  in  my 
own  image,  chewing  soap  in  order  to  foam 
at  the  mouth  like  the  impostor  in  the 
street:  and  nobody  but  myself  knew  the 
difference. 

Brian.  But  you  don't  apply  this  gen- 
erally.'^ There  are  plenty  of  good  short, 
strong  stories  by  good  strong  men. 

Basil.     Good  condiment. 

Menz'ies.  Good  convulsions :  most  inter- 
esting,  attracting  great  crowds ;  but  only 
convulsions. 

Basil.  Any  one  line  of  actual  poetry 
is  worth  a  million  short  stories. 

Menzies.  Here's  one.  "  Up  rose  the 
sun,  and  up  rose  Emily." 

Brian.     Yes ;  but  they  are  geniuses  — 


PROSE  ECLOGUE  227 

great    men,    some    of    tliose    short-story 
writers. 

Menzies.  My  dear  Brian,  we  are  all 
geniuses  nowadays. 

Basil.  Admirable!  All  men  are  gen- 
iuses :  it  is  only  a  difFerence  of  degree. 


ON  INTERVIEWING 


ON  INTERVIEWING 

PROSE    ECLOGUE 

Basil  —  Sandy  —  Brian  —  Menzies. 

BRIAN.  Did  3^ou  ever  interview  any- 
body, Basil? 

Basil.  Yes ;  but  I  shall  never  do  the 
like  again. 

Brian.     I  suppose  you  felt  very  small. 

Basil.  Yes.  Not  nearly  so  small,  how- 
ever, as  the  man  I  interviewed;  of  that  I 
am  certain. 

Sandy.  I  suppose  It  is  really  a  degrad- 
ing thing  for  both  parties. 

Brian.     Were  you  ever  interviewed? 

Basil.     No ;  but  once  I  was  asked  to  be. 

Brian.     And  what  did  you  reply  ? 

Basil.  Why,  I  said  I  was  much  obliged, 
but  begged  to  decline,  because  I  thought 

231 


232  THE  MAN   I'ORlilD 

it  a  very  illegitimate  advertisement  for  the 
interviewee,  and  a  most  illegitimate  way  of 
turning  a  guinea  for  tlie  "  intcrwicver,"  as 
they  used  to  spell  it  in  France.  He  argued 
with  me,  and  I  explained  what  I  meant.  I 
told  him  that  if  he  were  interested  in  my 
great  unread  works  and  in  my  personality, 
the  thing  for  him  to  do  was  to  buy  the 
works  or  read  them  in  the  British  Museum, 
and  then  write  his  article;  that  that  would 
be  a  journey  manlike  proceeding,  creditable 
and  reflecting  credit.  Interviewing,  I  said, 
was  a  most  miraculous  device  whereby  a 
man's  brains  were  picked  with  his  own  con- 
sent. I  told  him  that  the  very  highest 
kind  of  man  must  perforce  become  a  snob, 
however  temporarily,  the  moment  he  sub- 
mitted to  the  question ;  and  that  the  "  in- 
terwiever  "  in  the  exercise  of  his  trade  was 
on  the  same  footing  as  a  lacquey.  I 
pointed  out  how  injurious  it  was  to  pander 
to  the  idle  curiosity  of  the  public,  and  de- 
clared that  if  my  books  were  not  to  be 
read  for  themselves,  they  should  certainly 


ON  INTERVIEWING  233 

not  be  read  because  of  a  mawkish  interest 
in  me. 

Brian.  That's  what  Keats  said;  he 
would  have  no  "  mawkish  popularity." 

Sandy.  Yes,  but  interviewing  is  some- 
times quite  legitimate,  I  think.  For  ex- 
ample :  if  a  man  happens  to  be  a  great 
authority  on  a  public  question  which  has 
become  critical,  an  interview  might  be  the 
best  way  of  publishing  his  opinion. 

Basil.  That,  of  course.  But  we  were 
talking  of  the  personal  interview,  which  is 
the  interview  par  excellence. 

Brian.  The  only  one,  to  all  intents  and 
purposes.  Anything  else  is  quite  excep- 
tional. 

Menzies  (with  repressed  passion). 
Mawkish,  did  you  say.?  You  called  it 
mawkish  ? 

Basil.  Hillo,  Menzies,  old  chap ! 
What's  the  matter  with  you? 

Sandy.  IMenzies  has  been  interviewed 
two  or  three  times  recently. 

Brian.     The  devil  he  has ! 


234  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Basil.  It  was  Keats  called  it  mawkish, 
Menzies  —  Keats.  Pistols  if  you  like ;  but 
remember,  it  was  Keats. 

Menzies.  Where  is  the  use  of  talking 
about  Keats?  There  was  no  interviewing 
in  his  time ;  besides,  he  was  only  a  child 
when  he  died.  His  remarks  on  conduct  are 
not  of  the  least  consequence. 

Sandy.     Oh,  come ! 

Menzies.  I  mean  what  I  say.  Keats 
was  a  great  man,  and  would  have  been,  had 
he  lived,  a  consummate  artist  in  living  as 
well  as  a  consummate  artist  in  poetry.  But 
as  far  as  life  went,  he  was  only  in  the 
nursery  when  he  died.  The  school  of  life 
is  marriage  and  paternity. 

Basil.     Yes ;  well  ? 

Men^zies.  Well,  it  is  this  word  mawkish 
I  want  to  get  at.  What's  the  meaning  of 
it.f^  I  see  it  dealt  about  in  reviews  pretty 
liberally.  The  meaning  of  mawkish  .'^  De- 
fine —  define ! 

Basil.  It  meant  loathsome,  maggotty, 
making  the  gorge  rise;  but  it  has  lost  its 


ON  INTERVIEWING  235 

stronger  meaning.  You  never  see  it  ap- 
plied to  Zola.  Now  it  is  used  of  affected 
sentiment,  of  gush,  of  unctuous  morality, 
of  artistic  cant,  of  religiosity,  of  general 
flabbiness. 

Menzies.  Then  the  world  is  full  of 
mawkishness. 

Basil.     Chockfull. 

Menzies.  In  that  case  I  cannot  help 
being  mawkish  on  occasion ;  for  I  myself 
am  and  have  nothing ;  moods  drive  through 
me ;  individual  moods,  and  the  world's 
moods. 

Basil.  Nonsense,  Menzies  !  You're  not 
going  to  make  j^ourself  a  "  terrible  exam- 
ple "  of  everything,  are  you.'' 

Menzies.     What  if  I  have  no  choice.? 

Basil.  Oh,  and  that  was  why  you  sub- 
mitted to  the  "  inten\'iever  "  !  How  many 
times  were  you  interviewed.'' 

Menzies.     Four  times. 

Basil.     And  about  what.'' 

Menzies.     Myself. 

Basil.     Well,  in  the  most  dispassionate 


236  THE  MAN  FORBID 

way  and  speaking  with  the  authority  of  one 
in  an  advanced  form  in  the  scliool  of  hfe, 
I  say  that  it  was  mawkish. 

Menzies.  I  was  annoyed  at  the  word  at 
first,  but  I  am  quite  wilhng  to  admit  that 
it  was  mawkish. 

Basil.     And  glory  in  it ! 

Menzies.  No;  I  don't  glory  in  any- 
thing. All  that  I  contend  is  that  I  am 
quite  willing  to  be  called  mawkish  along 
with  the  majority  of  mankind,  my  meaning 
being,  of  course,  that  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  mawkishness ;  that  to  have  fits  of  senti- 
mentality, to  gush,  to  sermonise,  to  talk 
cant  about  art,  to  be  pharisaical,  to  be 
interviewed  —  is  to  be  human.  You  never 
can  understand  a  thing  by  sneering  at  it. 
I  would  abolish  all  such  words  as  mawkish, 
maudlin,  snob,  cad,  cant ;  they  are  despite- 
ful, intolerant  words.  See  here.  In 
Bacon's  time  Philosophy  included  Science; 
now  Science  includes  Philosophy.  Litera- 
ture has  hitherto  stood  apart,  embracing 
when  it  chose,  in  a  more  or  less  cavalier 


ON  INTERVIEWING  237 

manner,  both  Philosophy  and  Science;  but 
in  our  time  Science  is  going  to  embrace, 
has  already  flung  its  arm  about.  Litera- 
ture, and  - — ■ 

Sandy.     Oh,  oh !         " 

Menzies.  But  it  is  not  a  question  of 
whether  one  likes  it  or  not.  The  thing  is 
happening  before  our  eyes.  Both  the 
method  and  the  results  of  science  have 
been  applied  to  fiction  by  Zola,  to  the 
drama  by  Ibsen:  these  two  are  the  most 
powerful  literary  influences  of  our  time  — 
like  them  or  not ;  that  is  so  —  and  what 
they  have  started  must  go  on  — 

Sandy.     But  romance.'' 

Menzies.  flomance  must  just  "  fettle 
its  fine  joints  "  to  the  yoke  of  science,  or 
betake  itself  to  a  nunnery  ;  and  my  point  is 
that,  as  science  knows  neither  intolerance 
nor  despite,  the  words  mawkish,  maudlin, 
snob,  cant,  cad,  etc.,  are  unscientific,  and 
therefore  meaningless  and  illiterate. 

Basil.  But  what  has  all  this  got  to  do 
with  interviewing.'' 


238  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Menzies.  Everything.  In  literature  we 
have  had  Creators  and  Spectators ;  now  we 
are  having  Expericncers.  All  our  work  is 
becoming  more  and  more  consciously  auto- 
biographic ;  and  we  must  invite  experience, 
we  must  offer  ourselves  to  the  vivisection  of 
circumstance.  Remember,  I  am  saying 
nothing  as  to  whether  this  is  a  temporary 
disaster  for  literature  or  not.  But  that  it 
is  being  done,  and  that  it  will  be  done  uni- 
versally, I  am  certain ;  and  I  am  equally 
certain  that  in  the  end  it  must  make  im- 
mensely for  beauty,  and  that  faculty  in 
beauty  called  righteousness.  The  Experi- 
encer  is  here:  I  see  him  and  her  at  every 
turning  —  I  shan't  mention  names,  but 
there  they  are  —  many  minds,  but  all  of 
one  mood  to  see  the  thing  that  is,  to  shirk 
nothing,  to  have  done  with  trappings,  to 
lay  bare,  to  encounter,  to  say,  as  well  as 
be,  what  we  are  —  not  what  we  might  imag- 
ine ourselves,  not  even  what  we  would  like 
to  be.  And  this  is  a  great  mood,  I  think ; 
the  mood  in  which  men  and  women  wish  to 


ON  INTERVIEWING  239 

be  and  to  be  known  as  they  are,  to  respect 
and  to  be  respected,  to  love  and  to  be  loved 
simply  for  what  they  are :  the  very  greatest 
mood  since  the  time  of  Shakespeare,  when 
men  saw  themselves  as  demigods. 

Basil.  It  is  very  interesting,  Menzies, 
and  I  believe  I  see  your  meaning.  But 
about  this  interviewing. 

Menzies.  Well,  I  was  simply  submitting 
to  an  experiment ;  and  although  my  inter- 
viewers — •  three  gentlemen  and  a  lady  — 
were  most  accomplished  and  agreeable  peo- 
ple, I  own  I  didn't  like  it. 

Basil.     What  did  you  not  like  about  it? 

Menzies.  I  was  just  very  uncomforta- 
ble ;  and  there  was  that  most  horrible  of  all 
feelings  —  a  desire  to  say  more  than  was 
necessary,  such  as  Topsy  yielded  to  when 
"  'fessing  "  to  Miss  Ophelia. 

Sandy.      But  you  didn't  yield  to  it. 

Menzies.  Oh,  I  said  things  I  shouldn't 
have  said,  and  left  unsaid  things  I  should, 
both  in  matters  of  fact  and  opinion. 
There  you  are:  you  are  asked  a  question, 


240  THE  MAN  FORBID 

and  you  give  an  answer  more  or  less 
thoughtlessly,  sometimes  appearing  to  be 
interested  in  matters  to  which  you  are  quite 
indifferent. 

Sandy.  But  you  see  a  proof,  don't 
you? 

Menzies.  Oh,  yes ;  and  I  made  some 
changes,  but  not  many,  and  none  of  them 
essential,  because  I  did  not  wish  to  appear 
other  than  I  was.  A  mistake,  I  see  clearly 
now.  My  mind  works  so  slowly  that  I 
had  to  be  interviewed  four  times  before  I 
found  the  real  meaning  of  the  personal 
interview. 

Basil.     And  what  is  that.'^ 

Menzies.  Instead  of  giving  plain  an- 
swers to  plain  questions,  I  should  have  been 
prepared  with  an  ideal  autobiography 
couched  in  telling  phrases,  and  so  have 
established  a  legend  —  a  splendid  back- 
ground for  myself. 

Basil.  That  would  have  been  very  sci- 
entific ! 

Sandy.     I    guess    Menzies    is    ironical. 


ON  INTERVIEWING  241 

But  I  don't  agree  with  Basil  about  the 
ethic  of  the  interview.  The  interview  is 
here;  jou  may  develop  it  or  degrade  it, 
but  you  cannot  destroy  it. 

Menzies.  Right.  The  interview  existed 
in  embrj'o  in  the  first  movable  type.  In- 
deed, any  publication  is  an  Interview ;  and 
its  direct  employment  to-day  is  inevitable. 
There  is  no  limit  to  its  indirect  employ- 
ment. The  congregation  has  an  interview 
with  the  preacher,  and  the  interview,  called 
a  sermon,  is  published  for  the  world  to 
read;  the  lecturer,  the  platform  speaker, 
is  interviewed  by  his  audience ;  and  what 
are  the  speeches  in  the  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment but  the  nation  interviewing  the 
powers  that  be.?  We  have  already  Gov- 
ernment by  Interview. 

Sandy.  Bravo !  And  it  seems  to  me 
that  out  of  the  personal  interview  some- 
thing of  real  importance  may  be  evolved. 
The  want  of  mutual  charity  between  men 
and  women,  ti'ades  and  professions,  cliques 
and  coteries,   classes   and  masses,  between 


242  THE  MAN  FORBID 

peoples  and  continents,  is,  of  course,  the 
result  of  mutual  misunderstanding.  How 
could  this  gulf  of  enmity  be  bridged  over 
better  than  by  people  in  all  ranks  of  so- 
ciety, and  in  all  the  ends  of  the  earth, 
opening  frankly  their  minds  and  hearts  to 
each  other  in  daily  interviews  in  every 
newspaper? 

Brian.  By  Jove !  Reform  the  world 
by  interviewing! 

Basil.  I  like  this  better  now.  That  is 
what  Menzies  was  driving  at  a  little  while 
ago.  Literature,  even  newspaper  litera- 
ture, must  become  consciously  autobio- 
graphic. We  can  never  go  back  on  Rous- 
seau's "  Confessions,"  Goethe's  "  Fact  and 
Fancy,"  Carlyle's  "  Reminiscences."  We 
must  —  How  did  Menzies  put  it.'' 

Sandy.  I  remember.  We  must  be,  and 
be  known,  just  as  we  are;  respect  and  be 
respected,  love  and  be  loved,  for  what  we 
are. 

Basil.  Yes.  The  world  has  been  stand- 
ing on  too  great  ceremony  with  itself;  it 


ON  INTERVIEWING  2i3 

must  now   take   itself   into   its   own   confi- 
dence. 

Menzies.  Good.  That  is  the  only  way 
in  which  we  can  come  within  hail  of  the 
time,  long-preached,  long-prayed-for,  and 
so  long  of  coming, 

"  When  man  to  man  the  world  o'er 
Shall  brithers  be  for  a'  that." 


ON  THE  DOWNS 


ON  THE  DOWNS 

IT  was  time  to  walk  about  the  world 
again.  That  which  happens  to  most 
men  and  horses,  at  least  once  in  their  lives, 
most  frequently  at  the  end,  had  happened 
to  the  Itinerant ;  circumstances  had  obliged 
him  to  stumble  on  between  the  shafts  long 
after  he  should  have  been  turned  out  to 
grass.  Standing  in  his  cab-rank  one  day, 
very  limp  and  doleful,  he  said  to  himself, 
"  I've  had  enough  of  this ;  I'll  give  my 
last  kick  and  die  on  the  spot."  So  he 
flung  out  with  all  the  vigour  at  his  com- 
mand ;  but  instead  of  kicking  his  last  and 
dropping  down  dead,  he  only  threw  over 
the  traces,  and  smashed  his  match-box  of 
a  hansom.  Finding  himself  at  liberty,  he 
promptly  set  off  down  the  street,  and  was 
out  of  sight  before  the  drowsy  cabmen, 
lounging  against  the  railings  of  the  church, 

247 


248  THE  MAN  FORBID 

grasped  the  fact  that  he  had  left  his  situ- 
ation. Fear  of  capture  made  the  running, 
and  he  soon  reached  the  Downs. 

Leaving  the  more  literal  similitude  of  a 
cab-horse,  and  retaining  the  spirit  of  it, 
the  Itinerant  did  not  at  once,  nor,  indeed, 
for  a  considerable  time,  betake  himself  to 
grass  with  the  assiduity  becoming  a  time 
Nebuchadnezzar.  When  a  Scotsman  finds 
himself  at  cross  purposes  with  life,  what 
course  does  he  follow?  He  may  say  to 
himself,  as  the  Itinerant  did,  "  I  will  go 
and  walk  about  the  Downs."  Or  he  may 
say,  "  I  will  write  a  great  poem  " ;  or  "  I 
will  go  and  preach  in  Hyde  Park."  He 
may  say  this,  and  he  may  say  that,  but  he 
invariably  does  one  of  two  things.  He 
either  sits  down  and  drinks  deeply, 
thoughtfully,  systematically,  of  the  amber 
spirit  of  his  country,  or  he  reads  phi- 
losophy. The  Itinerant  read  philosophy. 
Doubtless,  philosophers  never  read  philoso- 
phy :  they  have  no  necessity  to  do  so.  The 
universe  is  as  clear  to  them  as  a  crystal 


ON  THE  DOWNS     "  249 

ball,  or  a  soap-bubble,  or  a  whinstone  — 
each  according  to  his  own  theory.  But  to 
the  ordinary  layman  and  heavily-burdened 
wayfarer,  above  all  to  Scotsmen  at  cross 
purposes  with  life,  philosophy'  is  a  sad 
temptation.  To  the  very  man  in  the  street, 
indeed,  it  occasionally  happens  that  the 
riddle  of  the  universe  grows  vehement  in 
its  appeal;  and,  however  secretly  and 
shamefastlj',  "  the  poor  inhabitant  below  " 
examines  again  the  interpretations  that 
have  been  wrought  out  by  others;  sets 
himself  to  answer  the  problem  anew  ;  finally, 
burns  his  books,  shaves,  dines  at  a  restau- 
rant, and  returns  to  Piccadilly  and  the 
bosom  of  his  family. 

The  Itinerant,  then,  shut  himself  up  with 
the  Downs  behind  and  the  sea  in  front, 
and  read  many  books  that  he  had  read 
before,  and  many  that  were  new  to  him. 
Remembering  that  both  Sterne  and  Brunei, 
the  former  at  least  preceptively,  the  latter 
by  example,  recommend  horizontal  repose 
as  the  surest  eliminative  of  cerebration,  he 


250  THE  MAN  FORBID 

lay  on  his  back  for  days  at  a  time,  think- 
ing, or  trying  to  think ;  but  that  luxurious 
attitude  seems  to  be  reserved  for  the  happy 
sublimation  of  humour  and  science:  its  ef- 
fect upon  the  Itinerant  was  only  to  pre- 
cipitate him  more  deeply  in  the  turbid 
solution  to  which  his  reading  and  brooding 
had  reduced  all  things.  Not  a  moment 
too  soon  he  shifted  the  venue ;  climbed  out 
of  the  metaphysical  lye  and  reached  the 
Downs  at  last. 

It  was  the  end  of  January.  There  had 
been  no  winter ;  but  now  it  seemed  about  to 
begin.  Although  the  wind  was  westerly, 
it  blew  harsh  and  cold,  rasping  over  stub- 
ble and  furrow.  In  a  broad,  almost  level 
field  on  the  lowest  slope,  an  old  plough- 
man stumbled  behind  his  team:  the  horses 
were  stiff  and  rusty ;  the  plough  mouldy 
and  out  of  date ;  an  urchin,  small  and 
elvish,  the  ploughman's  grandson  probably, 
held  the  bridle;  the  heavy  clayey  soil 
stuck  so  close  and  thick  that  the  clumsy 
share  had  to  be  scraped  with  a  hoe  at  either 


ON  THE  DOWNS  251 

furrow-end.  A  very  ancient  implement, 
and  most  unsteady  ploughing ;  the  lines  of 
the  old  peasant's  laboured  poem  did  not 
run  smoothly  on  the  sheet  of  earth  he 
scored:  but  the  sun  and  the  rain  and  the 
seasons  will  make  it  all  right;  the  golden 
crop  in  the  autumn  will  rustle  as  richly 
over  the  shaky  scrawl  of  the  worn-out  hand 
as  over  the  polished  lines  of  the  steam- 
plough. 

In  a  belt  of  trees  above  the  ill-ruled 
field  a  throstle  sang  a  shrill  prelude ;  weeks 
ago  he  thought  the  spring  had  come,  the 
season  was  so  mild.  His  pipe  will  be  mel- 
lower later  on.  Down  in  the  churchyard, 
in  the  early  summer,  the  passenger  (the 
churchyard  here  is  a  thoroughfare  for 
pedestrians)  may  catch  a  tapping  sound 
among  the  gravestones  —  the  mavis  crack- 
ing snails  with  savage  glee !  The  snail  is 
the  mavis's  oyster:  and  when  he  has  lubri- 
cated his  throat  with  a  dozen  or  so,  his 
notes  become  the  purest  and  most  spiritual 
to  be  heard  in  the  grove. 


252  THE  MAN  FORBID 

Suddenly,  the  bells  rang  out  from  the 
church-tower.  It  was  Saturday  afternoon, 
and  the  ringers  were  practising.  At  the 
very  first  bob  of  the  bells,  a  flight  of  star- 
lings in  a  high  swart  clump  of  twisted 
boughs,  resenting  the  artificial  sound,  sweet 
as  it  seemed  in  the  distance,  or  prompted 
by  the  well  known  professional  jealousy  of 
the  passerine  order  to  emulate  music  so 
space-filling  and  important,  broke  out  into 
a  frenzied  chattering,  surged  madly  into 
the  air,  and  swooped  down  upon  the  gar- 
dens of  the  sea-coast  town.  The  Norman 
tower  from  which  the  ringing  came  stood 
out  a  reddish  brown  against  the  grey-green 
sea.  Not  a  sail  was  visible.  Like  an 
enormous  shelf  of  glossy,  oily,  well-planed 
slate,  the  long,  broad  water  sloped  up 
against  the  sky.  A  slab  of  dingy  opal, 
greasy,  with  a  pale  emerald  flame  travel- 
ling over  it  transparently,  the  sea  leant  on 
the  stony  firmament  as  on  a  wall.  Behind, 
the  sinuous  Downs,  grey,  green,  and  red  — 
old  land,  budding  crops,  and  fresh  earth 


ON  THE  DOWNS  253 

—  rocked  and  swayed  with  the  motion  of 
the  world;  and  the  Itinerant,  falHng  into 
a  trance,  had  a  vision  which  dehvered  him 
from  the  spell  of  his  own  thought. 

He  beheld  a  young  man,  like  a  demi- 
god, build  up  alone,  but  with  the  help  of 
many  obsequious  genii,  a  noble  palace  of 
porphyry  roofed  with  gold.  In  the  pal- 
ace were  many  sumptuous  suites  of  apart- 
ments which  the  demi-god,  helped  by  his 
genii,  furnished  and  adorned  with  all  that 
was  convenient  and  beautiful  from  the  ends 
of  the  earth.  In  the  palace  also  were  lofty 
galleries  dedicated  to  the  various  arts  and 
sciences.  When  all  Avas  ready  the  demi- 
god married  a  beautiful  goddess,  who  gra- 
ciously condescended  to  share  his  palace  of 
porphyry  and  gold;  and  they  filled  their 
house  with  their  friends  —  gods,  demi- 
gods, heroes,  and  men  and  women.  Joy- 
ful children  were  bom  to  them;  and  they 
spent  their  time  happily  in  their  family,  in 
the  enjoyment  of  friendship,  in  the  study 
of  all  that  might  be  known,  and  in  the 


251  THE  MAN  FORBID 

pleasures  of  the  arts.  But  the  builder  of 
the  palace  was  dissatisfied.  In  a  chamber 
at  the  top  of  his  highest  tower  he  brooded 
on  the  mystery  of  the  universe.  "  What.?  " 
he  said ;  and  "  Why  ?  "  He  wrote  many 
volumes  answering  these  questions ;  but  al- 
ways at  the  end  of  each  volume  he  found 
the  questions  starting  up  again.  At  last, 
when  he  was  old,  one  night  in  his  lonely 
chamber  an  invisible  power  seized  him,  led 
him  through  all  his  galleries,  and  through 
the  offices  of  his  palace,  out  by  a  little 
postern,  where  at  his  feet  lay  a  deep  pit, 
which  he  knew  was  dug  for  him.  Before 
he  stretched  himself  in  it,  all  his  thought 
and  speculation  rushed  through  his  mind 
once  more,  and  yearning  to  say  some  word 
that  should  be  an  answer  to  the  question  of 
the  world,  he  cried  aloud,  lifting  his  face 
to  heaven  for  the  last  time,  "  Live  to  Die !  " 
At  the  very  moment  of  his  utterance  and 
upward  glance,  there  issued  from  an  oppo- 
site postern,  leading  out  of  another  palace 
of  porphyry  and  gold  which  had  been  built 


ON  THE  DOWNS  255 

there  at  the  same  time  as  his  own,  an  aged 
figure  in  every  respect  like  himself.  But 
the  second  demi-god,  hearing  the  cry 
"  Live  to  Die ! "  raised  his  voice,  and,  with 
a  wrathful  gesture,  replied,  as  they  fell 
into  the  pit  together,  "  Die  to  Live  I " 


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